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Issued in a Convenient Form For the Pocket . 

Vol. l,No. 307, Feb.25, 1885. Subscription $30. 


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COFYRIUHTED BY NORMAN L. MUITRO, 1885 , 









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DAISY DARRELL 




By LAURA C. FORD. 


Entered according to Act of Congress^ in the year 1885, by Nor- 
man L. Munro^ in the office of the Librarian of 
Co7igress, at Washington^ D. G. 



NOKMAN L. MUNKO, PUBLISHER, 

94 AND 26 VANDDWATEI^ ST, 








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[COPYRIGHTED,] 

DAISY DARRELL. 


By LAURA C. FORD. 


CHAPTER I. 

“some day the tables will turn.” 

PiNELANDS, the country residence of Colonel James Fitz- 
gerald, was ablaze with light without and within. 

Gleaming chandeliers hung from the ceiling of the 
stately halls and parlors; and gleaming lanterns hung 
from the branches of the great, somber pines on the lawn. 

It was Si fete given in honor of the twenty -first birthday 
of Miss Geraldine Fitzgerald, the sole daughter of the 
house, and the acknowledged beauty of the country for 
miles and miles around Pinelands. 

Her father, a widower, who was still a handsome and 
comparatively young man, being on the sunny side of 
forty-five, was exceedingly proud of her, as he was also of 
his only other child, a son of fifteen years of age, who an- 
swered to the name of Harry. 

It was early in the evening, and the guests had not be- 
gun yet to arrive, and Miss Fitzgerald’s toilet was not 
quite completed. 

She was seated before a large mirror in her room, and 
her lustrous black eyes often turned to catch the pleasing 
reflection of herself, while her glistening black hair was 
being arranged by a girl who was in many respects the 
opposite of herself. This girl was in age about sixteen 
years. 

Her name was Daisy Darrell. 

She was small and plump, and comical dimples came 
into her round cheeks as she puckered her lips. She was 
blue-eyed, and flaxen-haired, and she, too, was exquisitely 
beautiful. 

But the blue eyes had a steely glitter in them,' and the 


DAISY DARRELL. 


delicate sea-shell complexion was dashed with red, and her 
arched brows were drawn in a way suggestive of anger. 

The slender fingers trembled also, as if with the power 
of some inward tumult, which caused them to be some- 
what ungentle in their touch, perhaps, on the long, black 
hair, for Miss Fitzgerald suddenly knotted her face and 
spoke sharply: 

“ Be more careful, Daisy. You tug at my hair as if you 
were twisting a rope.” 

The cojor deepened on Daisy Darrell’s face, and she 
caught her under lip in an ill-natured grimace between her 
small white teeth, but she uttered not a word in response. 
Yet her hands ceased their nervous haste, and she com- 
pleted the arrangement of the beauty’s hair without calling 
forth any further reproof. 

She also deftly laced on the white satin dress, which so 
perfectly fitted the faultless figure, and then fastened the 
scarlet blossoms in the jet-black hair and at the graceful 
throat, and then she folded her arms and stood aside with 
childish disdain. Geraldine Fitzgerald, gleaming in satin, 
and glittering in diamonds, surveyed herself in the mirror. 

She was intensely vain, as was evinced by the proud 
consciousness of her look, and by a question she put to 
Daisy Darrell. 

“ Did you ever see me look more beautiful than I do to- 
night, Daisy Darrell ?” 

“ You would be a very ugly woman if that costume did 
not make jmu look handsome,” the girl retorted sharply. 

‘ ‘ Dress is everything — even 1 would be presentable if I 
was fixed up in that style !” 

There was an unmistakable ring of discontent and of 
envy in her voice, which Miss Fitzgerald must have 
noticed, for she said contemptuously, turning herself be- 
fore the mirror, and shaking out the folds of her snowy 
robe : 

“ I expect you will alwaj^s have to depend on your im- 
agination as to how you will look in a costume like this, 
as it isn’t at all probable that you will ever appear in such 
an one. Poor people don’t usually appear in such dresses, 
even when their rich relations are generous enough to give 
them a home and provide for them, as my father does for 
you. And you are by no means as grateful as you should 
be for the favor.” 

The last sentence was spoken in a tone of great dignity 
and severity, and having uttered it. Miss Geraldine Fitz- 
gerald caught up her fan and lace handkerchief from the 
marble slab of the dresser, and hurried out of the room- 
hearing the roll of carriage wheels on the drive outside, 
announcing the arrival of the first guests. 


DAISY DAHHELL, 


3 


Left alone, Daisy Darrell flung herself into a chair and 
burst into a passion of tears, muttering spitefully between 
her sobs, like a vexed child : 

“Not as grateful as I should be for the favor, ain’t I? 
No— I am not grateful — not the least bit in the world — for 
the privilege of being your servant, Geraldine Fitzgerald ; 
of coming at your call, and going at your beck ! It is very 
generous, forsooth, in your father to give food and shelter 
to his sister’s orphan child — and to shut his eyes to the 
fact that she never appears in the parlor, is never presented 
to his daughter’s guests as her kinswoman and equal in 
blood! No; I am not grateful for that favor, Geraldine 
Fitzgerald. In fact, .1 am very ungrateful for such at- 
tentions as I receive in this house, as you may And some 
day, my haughty cousin ! Some day the tables will turn!” 

She uttered the prophecy with clinched hands and teeth, 
and through a paroxysm of tears. 

Daisy Darrell was not bad at heart — she was not even 
unamiable, but at that moment all the evil of her nature 
had come to the surface, for she was a young girl, and 
there was a ball in the house, the gayety of which she was 
permitted only to see and to hear from a distance, but by 
no means to enter into. 

The first strains of music floated up to her, and she 
sprung to her feet. 

‘ ‘ Oh, when my day does come ! when the tables do turn !” 
she aspirated. 

And then she dried her eyes on her white muslin sleeve, 
and went from the room and from the house. 

She stole to an open window and halted under a pine 
tree whose solemn branches drooped protectingly over 
her. 

Standing there, obscured by trailing vines, Daisy Darrell 
peered in through the lace curtains on the ball. 

It vras a brilliant scene over which the chandelier poured 
a flood of golden light. There were gleaming silks and 
glittering jewels ; there were bright faces and sparkling 
eyes ; there were strains of seductive music, and there was 
the fall of glancing feet keeping time to it as the dancers 
floated and wheeled gracefully to and fro. 

Daisy Darrell’s lips parted and her breath came flutter' 
ingly through them. Unconsciously her own feet moved 
on the dew-damp grass, keeping time to the music. 

A couple— by far the most graceful of all that graceful 
throng — floated near to the window in the bewildering 
waltz, and they caught and held the eyes of Daisy Darrell. 

They were Geraldine Fitzgerald and a tall, handsonie 
young gentleman— and Geraldine was looking up into his 
eyes, and he was looking down into hers. 


4 


DAISY DARRELL. 


“I wonder who he is ?” Daisy muttered, the light dying 
out of her face, and the look of discontent which it had 
worn when she first stole to the spot coming into it again 
— “I suppose it is Clifford Bancroft, the wealthy New 
Yorker she met at Long Brandi last month, and whom 
she has been raving about ever since.” 

She said nothing more, but the look of discontent no 
more left her face as she stood there, and her feet no longer 
kept time to the seductive music. 

Her bright blue eyes watched those two as they fioated 
about in the mazes of the waltz, and she noticed with grow- 
ing bitterness, which had an unacknowledged touch of 
envy in it, that the dreamy black eyes of the young man 
looked always tenderly down into the lustrous orbs of his 
beautiful partner. 

“She has everything,” Daisy Darrell said, muttering 
the words through her small teeth— “ pleasure, and money 
and love, and I have nothing-r-nothing ! I don’t even 
have the life of a petted spaniel ! No — I don’t !” 

Whereupon, overcome by the immensity of her own 
desolation, the orphan dropped down on the ground, and 
hiding her face in the dew-wet grass she began to sob 
bitterly. - 

There were merry voices and merry laughter floating 
constantly through the open windows, but she heard them 
in a meaningless way ; heard them as she did the sound of 
the wind in the pine branches overhead, without paying 
any heed to them. So she was not aware that a step w^as 
approaching her ; she did not notice the odor of the fra- 
grant cigar that the owner of the step was smoking, and 
she started up with a smothered exclamation as the coming 
feet unconsciously brushed against her. A young gentle- 
man, quite as much surprised at the encounter as herself 
evidently, suddenly halted beside her, looking down at her 
in the uncertain light with startled black eyes. 

“I beg your pardon,” he said confusedly, his gentle- 
manly self-possession being completely put to flight by the 
astonishment at her unsuspected presence, “ I had no idea 
of meeting a young lady out here.” 

“I have no idea that y oujdid, ” the young lady responded, 
in a half-defiant, half -amused tone, “so it was a waste 
of breath to say so.” 

She had arisen with a leap to-her feet, and stood before 
him looking up into his face with her saucy blue eyes, on 
the lashes of which two drops of the copious tear-fall she 
had been indulging in still hung, sparkling, as he could see 
by the light ot the lantern swinging from the tree bough 
above her, like fine diamonds. “ And I certainly had no 


DAISY DARRELL. 5 

expectation of meeting a young gentleman out here,” she 
added. 

He sniiled slightly, showing a row of strong white teeth 
under his heavy mustache, and dropping his cigar to lift 
the tall silk hat from his curling black hair, he said : 

“ Permit me to introduce myself. I am Clifford Ban- 
croft— a sort of a make-believe lawyer who boasts a pre- 
tentious sign, and an unpretentious practice in the city of 
New York. Will you honor me by mentioning your own 
name ?” 

“No, I won’t,” she responded, doggedly, knitting her 
low, white brow petulantly. “ I am much less pretentious 
than your practice, however humble it may be, and it 
isn’t any use to tell you my name — for it isn’t likely that 
you will ever bear it again from the lips of any one else.” 

There was, as he noticed, a great deal of bitterness in 
her fresh, girlish voice, and he looked steadily down into 
her uplifted face, with a world of curiosity in his hand- 
some eyes. 

“ If you will not tell me your name, you will at least let 
me conduct you into the parlor, won’t you?” he said; “ the 
music is again beginning. ’ 

In the radiance coming through the window near which 
they were standing, and from the Chinese lanterns swing- 
ing over her head, Daisy Darrell directed his eyes by a gest- 
ure of her hand to the crumpled and grass-stained muslin 
dress. 

‘ ‘ This is an elegant costume to appear in Miss Fitzger- 
ald’s parlor, isn’t it?” she said, with ai little, harsh laugh. 
“ But for all its untidiness, it would be considered less out 
of place in that aristocratic crowd than I would. Why, 
your ears and mine would be boxed for the impertinence.” 

Still gazing curiously down into her piquant face with 
its flush of anger and defiance, he asked : 

“ Tell me something of yourself, please. Tell me where 
you live?” 

“ If to live means to have any pleasure,” she responded, 
a hint of tears coming into her voice and into her eyes 
also, as he could easily discover, “then I don’t live any- 
where. I am just a little nobody, that’s all. ’ 

At that instant a white and an exceedingly delicate 
hand, sparkling with diamonds, drew aside the lace cur- 
tain, and Miss Fitzgerald’s beautiful head appeared be- 
tween the folds. 

Daisy Darrell shrank into the shadow, and then with 
fleet steps disappeared around the house without being 
seen by her cousin, . ,, -o 

“ Po you prefer solitude to our sweet society, Mr. Bap- 


DAISY DARRELL, 


croft,” Geraldine exclaimed, seeing the young gentleman 
standing there alone. , . , 

He turned with a smile and stepped into the room 
through the low window. , . n 

“Don’t charge me with possessing such bad taste, ne 
said, and added, with a curiously intent look coming into 

his dreamy eyes: , ^ i. .u 

“Yet it is in moments of solitude that the greatest dis- 
coveries are made. ^W^ho knows but that I came upon 
something out there to-night that will make or mar my in- 
dividual fortune— if it doesn’t turn the world upside down !” 

Before Geraldine could reply, a sharp shriek pierced the 
night outside, and echoed in the dancing-hall, ringing out 
shrilly above the swelling music, and seeming to paralyze 
the merry-makers with sudden dismay ! 

The cry had evidently come from a woman — and a 
woman in dire affright or distress — and as the music crashed 
into silence, many of the crowd hurried out into the lawn 
to ascertain the cause of that startling disturbance. 

Foremost among those were Clifford Bancroft and Geral- 
dine Fitzgerald, who went simply because he did. But he 
was urged forward by deep anxiety, for he could not help as- 
sociating the shriek with the pretty, flaxen-haired young 
girl he had found lying and weeping so passionately under 
the pine tree, so short a time before, the young girl who 
had taken, so strong a hold on his fancy. 


CHAPTER II. 

“angel or devil?” 

When Daisy Darrell flitted so swiftly out of Clifford 
Bancroft’s sight, she ran into the deep shadows of the pine 
trees, with no aim in view except to be alone. 

“ I will pout myself into a good humor,” she said to her- 
self, as she sank down on a rustic bench under a great tree ; 
“ I am awfully mad now.” 

But suddenly she sprung up with that sharp shriek which 
had reached the ears of the merry-makers in the dancing- 
hall. 

As Daisy had thrown herself petulantly on the seat, a 
great, flery serpent had suddenly fallen from the branches 
overhead, and had shone, writhing and hissing, three feet 
from her face. 

It hung suspended queerly in the air. 

She started up, and began to run fleetly toward the 
house, when a ringing peal of boyish laughter fell on her 
ears, and the voice of her wild cousin, Harry Fitzgerald, 
called her name. 

Instantly a conviction of the truth flashed over her, that 


DAISY DARRELL. 


7 


she had been the victim of one of his ingenious pranks, 
and she immediately paused and stood looking curiously 
but disdainfully at the fiery serpent, which by this time 
was lying prone on the grass a few yards away. 

“ Whom do you suppose you frightened. Master Harry?’’ 
she called out, contemptuously; and an impudent voice 
from the tree above responded : 

“I frightened you — I scared you nearly to death ! Why, 
you yelled like a panther, and just because you saw some 
bits of ‘fox-fire’ strung together on wire. You’re a brave 
girl, you are !” he added, derisively. 

She was about to retort indignantly, but the sound of 
other voices fell on her ears. 

Some of the dancers, attracted by her wild outcry, had 
evidently sallied out to search for the cause. 

She sprung forward, and picking up the mock serpent, 
she ran away with it, and hid in the hollow trunk of a 
great, gnarled catalpa-tree, from which place of retreat 
she heard the wondering comments of those who were 
searching over the grounds. 

“ It was nothing but the baying of some small dog,” she 
heard a masculine voice assert, “and in the noise of the 
music and dancing it was sufficiently indistinct to resem- 
ble a human voice. Let us go back to the house. ‘ On 
with the dance; let joy be unconfined.’ ” 

There was a general assent to the explanation, and also 
to the proposition, as Daisy was glad to discover, for she 
could not venture from her uncomfortable position in the 
tree-trunk without being detected, and subjected to un- 
pleasant questioning, as long as they wandered over the 
grounds. 

She peered cautiously out of her hiding-place to see if 
the coast was clear. 

The crowd were returning to the house in twos and 
threes, but she saw, with chagrin, that one couple had 
resolved not to follow their example. 

In the very faint light she saw them seat themselves on 
the rustic bench from which she had been terrified a short 
time before. 

“I hope they'll catch the sneezes before they’ve been 
there five minutes, and leave, for both my feet are going 
to sleep here. Ugh !” she muttered to herself. 

But the damp night-air did not seem to have any bad 
effect upon them, for they sat there talking together for 
at least fifteen minutes, and poor Daisy’s aching limbs 
were growing numb. 

“ I’ll scare them away!” she said desperately to herself; 
whereupon, without taking time to reconsider her resolve, 


8 DAISY DARRELL. 

she sent the fiery serpent flying through the air toward 
them. 

It fell around the neck of the lady, who was Miss Ger- 
aldine Fitzgerald, and she rent the air with such a succes- 
sion of piercing shrieks, that Daisy was stricken with dis- 
may on hearing them, and she sprung from the tree and ran 
away as fast as her numb feet would permit. . 

Clifford Bancroft, who was the gentleman in company 
with Miss Fitzgerald, snatched the mock serpent from her 
neck and held it up before her, saying, soothingly : 

“It is only a piece of decayed, phosphorescent wood; 
see, it cannot hurt you. But it was cruel to throw it on 
you. Wait here an instant.” 

Without heeding her expostulations against being left 
alone, or possibly without hearing them, he started in 
pursuit of the culprit, whom he had detected rushing away 
from the catalpa tree. 

In a minute he caught a glimpse of her white garments 
in the darkness, and with a few swift strides he had come 
up with her, and his grasp was on her arm. 

“ I have caught you!” he exclaimed. 

“ I think you’ll be apt to let me go again,” she responded 
defiantly, “unless you are willing to stand here all night 
and catch your death of cold. For I won’t be taken alive 
before Miss Fitzgerald to be scolded by her. I have had 
enough of that already.” 

Clifford Bancroft stooped down and peered into her face 
in the uncertain light. 

“It is you?” he said. “Who are you, you little fire- 
brand?” 

“I may be, as you say, a little fire-brand. Miss Ger- 
aldine Fitzgerald calls me ‘ a devil ’ when she’s in a bad 
humor. So you had better not keep company with me,” 
she responded, saucily, 

So saying, she wrenched her arm from his detaining 
grasp, and now that the young blood had begun to course 
with its usual freedom through her limbs, she ran away 
with the swiftness of a lap-wing, and he stood staring at 
the spot from which she had disappeared. 

“ Angel or devil, she is the most interesting, the most be- 
wildering little vision that ever flitted before me,” he mut- 
tered. . 

And then he returned to Miss Fitzgerald, who still re- 
mained where he had left her. 

“ Your shrieks are again bringing the crowd from the 
ball-room,” he said to her, offering her his arm. “ Let us 
return and satisfy their curiosity by exhibiting the cause of 
the terror.” 


DAISY DARRELL, 


9 


He glanced with a smile at the serpent now hanging 
limply on his left arm. 

“Did you find out the villain who frightened me so?” she 
asked, angrily, and he answered positively, and with a 
singular emphasis : 

“No; I did not — but I won’t leave Pinelands until I do !” 

Miss Fitzgerald looked into his face with a smile. 

“ It is a matter of no importance,” she said — not dream- 
ing of what the future would develop. 

That night there were two persons whose slumbers were 
haunted by a face that had never fiitted through their 
dreams before. 

Those two were Clifford Bancroft and Daisy Darrell, and 
each dreamed of the other. 

But Geraldine Fitzgerald saw in her sleep only the same 
dark eyes that had looked through her own, into the very 
center of her heart a few weeks before ‘ ‘ on the beach at Long 
Branch.” In her sleep she was thrilled by the echo, as it 
were, of the same low, rich voice whose tender utterances 
had trembled on her ear there. 

No vows had ever been breathed between them, yet she 
felt that he was hers, and she was his. 

No thought that his love was not firmly fixed upon her, 
came to disturb her. . , , , . n , 

She rested secure in the devotion which she believed she 
had detected in his eyes and in his voice that night when 
they had met again after a month’s separation. 

“ His father and mine were like brothers in their college 
days,” she whispered to herself that night as she laid her 
regal head on her pillow — “so it is the most natural thing 
in the world that we, their children, should love each 
other. ” 

And with a happy thrill at her heart she fell asleep to 
dream all night long the most blissful things of Clifford 
Bancroft. But the young lawyer all night long on his part 
saw visions of flaxen hair, and tear-wet blue eyes, and 
heard, or seemed to hear, a fresh, girlish voice uHermg all 
manner of defiant things, but never once did Geraldine 
Fitzgerald, with her regal beauty, cross his mental vision. 
Yet only the day before, he would have sworn that the 
world held no women who could stir his heart as she did . 

All night long Daisy Darrell in her dreams was wander- 
ing under the wliispering pine trees with the tender bl^k 
eyes of the handsome New Yorker upon her, and with his 
low, rich voice speaking to her and telling her wonderful 


things. . 

The summer morning crept into 
awoke her— bringing the real to her, 
to flight. 


her little room and 
and putting the ideal 


10 


DAISY DARRELL. 


An ugly feeling took possession of her. A feeling of 
bitterness and envy it was, such as she had experienced 
the night before when looking in upon the waltzers. 

It was by no means a natural condition of mind with 
Miss Darrell, and even while indulging it she was ashamed 
of it. But for all that, slie did not try to banish it ; she 
rather hugged it to her heart, and felt a sort of grim satis- 
faction in knowing that she resented in her own mind the 
indignities which she felt she"was subjected to in that 
house. 

“I am nothing more than an upper servant,” she mut- 
tered, snapping her eyes angrily, and tearing at her short, 
curly hair, which she was arranging before the little mir- 
ror— “ I ought to have told Mr. Banci’oft that when he was 
so anxious to find out who I was last night. If I ever see 
him again — and of course I shall, as he is so much in love 
with Miss Fitzgerald ” — here her voice, which had been 
growing lighter, suddenly hardened — “ I will tell him, if he 
inquires who I am, that I am only a servant here.” 

She was in the habit of performing one service in the 
morning which she would have done with infinite pleasure, 
if it had not been exacted of her as a duty by her cousin, 
and that was to gather and arrange the flowers in the par- 
lors while the dew was still on them. She had a dainty 
way of arranging them which Miss Fitzgerald liked, so 
she had said to her : 

“ I shall expect you to fix the flowers in the parlors every 
morning; it is not much to expect of you, surely — con- 
sidering ” \ 

What the last word meant she did not say, but Daisy 
understood her to allude to the favors she received there as 
a poor dependent on her uncle’s bounty, and so it was with 
something of the ill-grace of an irksome duty that she 
culled and blended the rare, sweet flowers, rather than the 
exquisite pleasure it would otherwise have been. 

The morning after the ball, with scissors in hand, she 
repaired as usual to the garden, and with her skirts caught 
up on her arm so as to protect them from the dew, she was 
busily employed in filling a large basket with flowers, 
when the sound of a footstep behind her caused her to 
glance hurriedly around. As she did so she let her skirts 
fall over her pretty feet and ankles, and her face grew 
'^crimson with mortification at the predicament in which 
she had been found. 

There, standing less than a yard from her, looking down 
with an amused twinkle in his black eyes, was Clifford 
Bancroft. 

“Good morning,” he said, lifting his hat and smiling, 
“you are an early bird.” 


DAISY DARRELL. 


11 


She was still flushed and embarrassed with a memory of 
the little slippers and the several inches of pink stockings 
which had been presented to his view in her efforts to pro- 
tect her white skirts from the contaminating dew, but 
nevertheless a roguish twinkle came into her eyes as she 
responded saucily, “ The early bird catches the worm, you 
know.” 

The uncomplimentary allusion was pointed at himself in 
a pretty, impertinent way that fairly riddled his heart, 
which last night those same bright eyes had greatly dis- 
turbed. 

“I am a worm that Avill not struggle against the captiv- 
ity,” he said, drawing a step nearer to her, and looking 
down into her uplifted face, which the gold of the morn- 
ing sun brightened ; “ I. surrender to the bird.” 

There was so much of earnestness underljung the light 
words that she turned her face away, and bent over a 
rosebush with the blush deepening on her cheeks, and the 
golden lashes drooping quiveringly over her blue eyes. 

“ Last night you wouldn’t tell me your name,” he said, 
watching her little hands as they twisted a rose from the 
stem; “won’t you tell me this morning ?” 

She turned her head, and glanced saucily up at him. 

“What good will it do you to know my name?” she 
asked. 

“ I know it must be a pretty one,” he answered; “and 
you shall not take a rose from that bush until you tell 
me,” and he interposed his arm between her hands and 
the blossoms, laughing triumphantly as she shrank away 
from his near presence. 

“ If I cared to keep it a secret, I wouldn’t tell you,” she 
said, defiantly; “ but I had as lief you should know it as 
not. My name is Daisy Darrell.” 

“Daisy Darrell,” he repeated. “ It is a pretty name, 
just as I knew it must be. Are you a visitor here?” 

He was still bending over with his arm mechanically 
stretched between herself and the laden rosebush, thus 
guarding its blushing treasures from her rifling hands as 
he put the question, but he sprung to an erect position 
with ludicrous suddenness as she answered, with her blue 
eyes looking steadily into his face ; 

“ I am a servant at Pinelands !” 

If she had announced herself as being a disguised vam- 
pire he could not have appeared more surprised and 
shocked. 

After that involuntary movement which had brought 
him to an erect position before her, he stood veiy still for 
nearly a minute, looking down into the defiant little face 


12 DAISY DARRELL. 

uplifted to his, as if he had been stricken dumb by astonish- 
ment. 

Whatever he might have said after the first shock of 
surprise had worn off, can never be known, for just as he 
unclosed his lips to speak, his name was called by his 
father, a finedooking old gentleman, who approached him, 
with his arm linked in that of their host. Colonel Fitz- 
gerald. 

With her basket now full of dew sparkling flowers in one 
hand, and her scissors in the other, Daisy turned and 
walked hurriedly away, and Clifford, still feeling strangely 
bewildered, joined the two old gentlemen in their prom- 
enade. 

The elder Bancroft linked his disengaged arm into that 
of his son, and as the three moved abreast down the wide 
shell walk, he said ; 

“ I have been helping you out, my boy, in something that 
I know is very near your heart. I have been negotiating 
with my old friend here for a very great honor — for a very 
precious gift. I have been telling him about the confession 
you made to me touching the state of your heart yesterday 
morning, and he gives his full consent for you to woo and 
win his daughter if you can.” 

W'ith his brain whirling, and his heart standing still, Clif- 
ford heard those words. 

In a bewildered way, he realized that Colonel Fitzgerald 
had come around to his side, and his fatherly hand was on 
his shoulder, and his fatherly voice was in his ear, saying: 

“ I pledge you my word, Clifford, that there is no man.in 
the world to whom I would as willingly give my daughto, 
and I wish you success in your suit with her !” 

He heard those words dumbly, and at the same time he 
seemed to be hearing a sentence his own father had ut- 
tered ; 

‘ ‘ I have been telling him about the confession you made 
to me touching the state of your heart yesterday morn- 
ing.” 

In a numb, drear way, the thought drifted through his 
mind ; 

“Yesterday morning is not this morning. Yesterday 
morning is dead and buried, never to be resurrected. This 
morning is pulsing with life, is filled with new thoughts— 
new purposes.” 

He dimly realized that , if Geraldine Fitzgerald was the 
queen of yesterday, Daisy Darrell was the queen of 
to-day. And Daisy Darrell, by her own confession, was 
only a servant in Pinelands ! 

But with these convictions over him, he smiled into the 


DAISY DAHRELL. ' 13 

faces of the oia gentlemen, and tacitly agreed to their plan 
by saying only : 

“ You do me honor far above my deserts.” 

And yet, even while saying that, his eyes were glancing 
furtively about in search of the little white-robed figure 
that had flitted away from him with a basket of dew- wet 
flowers in one hand and a pair of scissors in the other. 


CHAPTER III. . 

“I SHALL BE SURE TO MEET YOU!” 

While the three gentlemen were walking together in 
the garden, talking upon indifferent topics — for out of deli- 
cacy the proposed alliance, which the old men at least 
seemed to be much pleased with, was not discussed at 
length — the breakfast-bell sounded, and they turned their 
st^s to the house and entered the dining-room. 

There they found Geraldine awaiting them, tall and 
graceful and statuesque-looking in her flowing white 
morning dress, and a conscious flush mounted both to her 
face and to Clifford’s as they bowed to each other. 

What a beautiful woman she was, he thought, as she 
took her place behind the coffee-urn; and how grandly she 
would grace the head of any man’s table ! 

A moment before entering the dining-room there had 
been a sort of forlorn feeling over him ; but it had given 
place to one of intense gratification now. 

He would be very proud to exhibit such a woman as his 
wife to his bachelor iriends in New York. 

“ By Jove, how they will envy me!” he said to himself, 
and he inwardly laughed at the absurd infatuation for the 
pretty flaxen-haired “servant” girl that had come over 
him in the moonlight and lamplight last night, and among 
the flowers this morning. How ridiculous he had been! 

As the near kinswoman of the owners of the house, Daisy 
Darrell had, of course, a place at the table with them 
whenever she chose to avail herself of it. But this morn- 
ing she did not choose to take advantage of her privilege 
in that respect. She did not appear at the table, and there 
was no audible comment on her absence. 

“He believes I am really a hired servant,” she said to 
herself with a little laugh, “and just for the fun of the 
thing I won’t undeceive him. And, after all, I am not 
much else.” 

The smile that had dimpled her face died away, and the 
bitter, resentful look came in its place, and she burst into 
tears; and sinking down under the window of her own 
little room, before which she had been standing, she cried 


14 DAISY DARRELL, 

out as she bad done often and often before through the 
last dozen hours: 

“ I haven’t even the life of a petted spaniel! I wish I 
were dead !” 

What had come over her to make her feel so utterly mis- 
erable? Usually her fits of despondency were very short- 
lived. But ever since last night, ever since Geraldine 
Fitzgerald’s handsome lover had appeared before her in 
the uncertain light under the pine trees, and had looked 
down at her with such a curious, pitying look in his 
dreamy black eyes, there had been a sense of desolation 
over her that was terrible. 

She soon dried her eyes, however, for her tears were 
usually like April showers which the irrepressible sunshine 
chased away, and she arose fi’om the floor, on which she 
had been crouching, and went down into the now deserted 
dining-room, and partook of a hearty breakfast in solirary 
state. 

Afterward she went away from the house, and wandered 
out on the lawn where the tall pine-trees interlaced their 
somber arms, causing a fairy web of sunlight and shadow 
to fall over her as she walked slowly about under them. 

She soon discovered that she was not the only person 
who was indulging in a morning ramble out there in the 
scented grounds. 

Through the interstices of the drooping branches she 
caught sight of a white dress, and leaning forward and 
peering through the openings in the needle-like foliage, she 
satisfied herself that the white dress adorned .the majestic 
figure of Geraldine, and that she was leaning on the arm of 
Clifford Bancroft, whose handsome head was bent low as 
he talked earnestly to her. 

A spasm of pain shot through the heart of Daisy Darrell, 
and she turned with a swift movement and hid herself from 
the sight of them behind the trunk of a tree. 

There was a rustic seat under it made of twisted grape- 
vines, and she threw herself on it, with the heavy shadow 
cast by the gloomy pine -branches over her. 

But there was a far deeper shadow within her, as it were 
the ominous gathering of the storm that was to desolate 
her life in the terrible after-time ! 

“ She has everything, and I have nothing !” she muttered, 
with her little white teeth set defiantly, “ and she is not 
worthy of it, for she is hateful and cruel.” 

It did not occur to her to question the source from whence 
flowed the great bitterness that had come into her heart. 
She was an impetuous, fiery little creature, apt to be pow- 
erfully swayed for the time by any impulse, either for 
good or evil, that came over her, but happily yielding to 


DAISY DARRELL. 


16 


the dark influence only for the briefest period, as the 
good, which was much the strongest in her nature, was 
quick to assert itself again. 

But this morning it failed to do so, and for more than 
an hour she sat there under the somber tree, thinking all 
kinds of bitter, resentful things against Providence for its 
deeds in general, but especially for having given the heart 
of Clifford Bancroft to Geraldine Fitzgerald ! 

She had seen Clifford Bancroft but twice, and- yet she 
had fallen madly in love with him. It was the first love 
that had ever come into her life, and it had brought with 
it jealousy and misery. 

While she was sitting there nursing her wretchedness in 
the shadow of the pine-tree, the man to whom she had 
given her whole heart so impulsively was Avhispering 
vows of eternal fidelity to Geraldine Fitzgerald, and urg- 
ing her to name an early day for the solemnization of the 
marriage-rite which should give her wholly to him. And 
she was listening with downcast eyes, and with her heart 
thrilling rapturously; for she, too, from the depths of her 
soul, loved the handsome young lawyer, and never dreamed 
that the devotion he so passionately declared for her was 
not the genuine article, but an excellent counterfeit which 
had deceived e ven himself. 

When he parted with her at the steps of the broad ve- 
randa, and strolled away to sihoke a cigar, and to dream of 
her, she had given her promise to marry him in the “mild 
September,” now little more than three months off. 

As he wandered about under the trees, he came suddenly 
on the figure of Daisy Darrell, who was weeping passion- 
ately, with her bright head bowed in her hands. 

At the sight of her he halted, and his heart began to 
throb tumultuously. 

She had not seen him, and without being conscious of 
what he was doing even, he yielded to an impulse that 
came over him, and Avent up to her, and laid his unsteady 
hand on her curly hair, saying softly : 


She started, and lifted toward him her flushed and tear- 
wet face, which, Avith the bright drops standing on it, re- 
minded him— he was given to poetic fancies— of a rose 


dipped in deAv. , 

She Avas as impulsive as himself— for be it remembered 
that both of them were young, and singularly impressible 
—and she cried out, waving him away with her hand : 

“Go back to your darling Geraldine! Why do you 
trouble me ? What do you care whether I live or die?” 

She was beautiful— she was weeping— her blue eyes were 
looking up at him through a mist of tears — and he, as has 


16 


'DAISY DaRRDLL. 


been said, was young and impulsive— and at her passionate, 
reproachful words, his very heart seemed to be wrenched 
from his bosom. 

He lost all memory of his troth-plight to Geraldine Fitz- 
gerald— he lost all memory of, all care for, the social dis- 
tinction which, he believed, separated him from this sin- 
gularly fascinating young girl; and he dropped down on 
the seat by her side, and threw his arm around her, and 
drew her bright head down on his breast, whispering, pas- 
sionately : 

“ ‘ What do I care whether you live or die !’ I care more 
for you than for anything else on earth !” 

In saying that, he spoke the honest convictions of his 
soul, and he spoke the truth. He gave no thought to the 
future — to the disastrous consequences that might follow 
that love. Neither did she. 

With the ardor of youth they gave themselves up to the 
blissful consciousness that they loved each othei*. Neither 
of them looked beyond that. 

“I shall leave Pinelands to-morrow morning to attend to 
some important business,” he said; “but I cannot bear to 
go away feeling that you are not securely bound to me. I 
love you so that I feel as if something would swoop down 
from the very skies to take you from me. I will form 
some plan for our future. Meet me here at ten o’clock to- 
night, and I will tell you the conclusion I shall have 
come to.” 

And Daisy answered : 

“I shall be sure to meet you!” 

By that time the sun had passed into a cloud, and the 
shadow was deeper over her than it had been when she first 
sank on that seat two hours before ; but she was uncon- 
scious of it, and she was unconscious of the deeper shadow 
she was drawing over her life when she gave that promise. 

So they parted to meet again at ten that night. Clifford 
knew now, and'it afforded him exquisite delight, that Daisy 
Darrell was not, as he had believed, a servant at Pinelands, 
but was instead the near kinswoman of the aristocratic 
owner of the place, and the possessor, on her mother’s side 
at least, of as pure blood as that which coursed in his own 
veins. 

He felt sorely tempted a dozen times during the day to 
tell Geraldine that he had been mistaken in regard to his 
sentiment for her, that it was unbounded admiration 
rather than love he felt for her. But, somehow, he was 
not brave enough, or ungallant enough, whichever the feel- 
ing of restraint might be, to do so. The very thought 
made a coward of him. 

.And so in an embarrassed way he continued to play the 


DAISY DARDELL. 


17 


part of a lover during the hours he was with her, and he 
saw that she accepted the homage as genuine, and her lov- 
ing trust brought a sense of guilt to him that was painful. 

“lam going for a long ride,” he said, early in the after- 
noon. “ I know you will be very grateful to me if I tear 
myself away long enough to allow you to take your usual 
afternoon nap. So I will oblige you, even at the sacrifice 
of my own wishes.” 

Geraldine’s beautifiU face wore an expression of regret 
that flatly contradicted his assertion, but he pretended not 
to see it, and so he ordered a horse to be saddled, and rode 
gayly away, throwing a kiss to her as he cantered off 
through the avenue of trees, turning in his saddle to look 
back at her as she leaned from the parlor window gazing 
after him. 

“ She doesn’t really care for me,” he said to himself, by 
way of salving his conscience. But he knew he spoke 
falsely to his own soul, and that she did care for him as 
much as woman ever cared for man before ! 

When he met Daisy Darrell that night and looked into 
her eyes in the dim light of the gathering stars, he whis- 
pered in her ear : 

“I have arranged for our future, my darling. I have 
settled on a plan by which ‘you will be wholly mine, and I 
will be wholly yours 

Then he muttered hurriedly, explaining that plan, and 
Daisy listened blushing and trembling, and silently con- 
senting to what he proposed. 

She made only one remark, and that was : 

“ What will Geraldine think?” 

“Whatever she pleases,” Clifford Bancroft answered, 
drawing the little flaxen head to rest on his breast. 
“ Henceforth and forever, I shall care only for what you 
may think !” 

And Daisy believed him, and was willing to follow in 
the path he had marked out for her. 

Poor, deluded little Daisy ! 


CHAPTER IV. 

“YOU WILL SOON FIND OUT HOW VERY UNWORTHY I AM OP 

you!” 

The next morning Clifford Bancroft, in company with 
his father, left Pinelands. 

Geraldine Fitzgerald’s hand lingered willingly in his 
clasp when he bade her good-bye. 

They were standing together in the parlor, with the 
fragrant morning breezes floating in to them, laden with 


18 DAISY DARHELL. 

the perfume of a thousand flowers that were abloom in 
the grounds. 

The birds were singing merrily in the pine-trees, and all 
nature seemed to be rejoicing. 

But Geraldine Fitzgerald’s heart was very heavy within 
her. She was parting with the only man she had ever 
loved, A strange foreboding of evil was over her, and 
she could not shake it off. 

“You will always be true and faithful to me, won’t you, 
Clifford?” she asked with a throb in her mellow voice. 

He turned his head away, and a dash of red came into 
his face, but he answered steadily ; 

“ Of course I will;” then he added, always keeping his 
eyes averted from hers, “ but you will soon And out how 
very unworthy I am of you, and you will be glad to be rid 
of me, maybe.” 

“ Never,” she responded, and her whole heart was in her 
voice ; “ no matter how unworthy you may be, 1 will always 
love you. Nothing can divide us except your infldelity to 
me, and if I should discover that, I think, indeed I know, 
that I should hate you as fervently as I now love you.” 

He said not one word in reply to that; he did not know 
what answer to make, so he only dropped her hand and 
turned away. 

There were two pairs of eyes that watched him as he 
passed from sight, and two pairs of lips muttered of him, 
and singularly enough, both uttered the same words: 

“ He loves me!” 

Those two watchers were Geraldine Fitzgerald and 
Daisy Darrell, and how lonely the great house at Pinelands 
seemed to them with the void caused by the man each 
loved with all the strength of her nature so painfully ap- 
parent. 

There was also in the eyes of these two girls a feverish 
luster indicative of the mental excitement under which 
they labored. 

The great event which stirred the monotony of the tedi- 
ous days that followed Clifford’s departure, was the 
arrival each evening of the mail. 

With restrained eagerness, but Avith undisguised interest, 
Geraldine Fitzgerald Avatched her father’s movements day 
after day, as he sloAvly shuffled the letters in his hands, 
reading the superscription of each Avith exasperating slow- 
ness to himself before appropriating it as his OAvn, or pass- 
ing it to the proper owner. But the days passed on, until 
one week had elapsed since Clifford Bancroft’s departure 
from Pinelands, and no letter came to Geraldine. 

Daisy Darrell had no correspondents, so the sudden and 
vivid interest which she also took in the contents of the 


DAISY DARRELL, 


19 


mail-bag, would have astonished her uncle and cousin it 
they had noticed it — or bad even detected the tremor in her 
voice when she asked day after day, with averted face, and 
assumed carelessness: 

“Of course, there is no letter for me, uncle?” or some- 
thing to that effect ; and Colonel Fitzgerald would reply in 
his low, and naturally sullen tones : 

“No — nothing for you.” 

Neither he nor his daughter noticed the look of bitter dis- 
appointment that would come into Daisy’s pretty face, nor 
how the white lids would droop over her blue eyes in order 
to hide the tears that would spring into them, while she 
would turn and leave the room, to weep herself almost 
blind in her own little chamber. 

‘ ‘ Of course, he has forgotten me !” she would sob. ‘ ‘ How 
could he care for a little cast-off like me? He was only sorry 
for me, and that’s why he told me that he loved me — and 
that I should hear from him very soon. What a fool I was 
to believe he was in earnest !” 

“Hope deferred maketh the heart sick,” it is said. It 
also made Daisy Darrell very restless. 

She could not endure the monotony of the house, and 
she began to take long walks over the hills and by the 
brook-side, usually returning in the twilight. 

One day — it was the seventh after Clifford Bancroft’s de- 
parture— she seemed to be feverishly excited. Her cheeks 
glowed and her eyes sparkled. 

Her whole manner seemed to have undergone a change. 

The angry disdain which was so often in her blue eyes 
when she turned them on her cousin Geraldine, feeling her- 
self ill-used by her, was entirely gone, and in its place was 
a deprecating look, as if she was mutely begging pardon 
for something. 

Instead of going silently to her own room, as was her 
custom, that night she went into the library, where her 
uncle sat reading. 

She approached him, and put her hand timidly on the 
back of his chair. 

He turned his head, and looked up at her with evident 


surprise. 

“Well, Daisy, can I do anything for you?” he asked. 


Tears sprung into her blue eyes, and she winked them 
out on her cheeks. 

“ I want to say, uncle,” she said, tremulously, “ that if I 
have seemed ungrateful to you for the kindness you have 
shown me since mother died, and left me without home or 
friends a year ago, that I am sorry for it. I want to say 
that if I have not been happy here, it may have been 


20 DAISY DARRELL. 

partly my own fault. And, uncle, I want to kiss you good- 
night.” 

Colonel Fitzgerald was surprised at this unusual manifes- 
tation of gentleness and affection from his hoydenish 
niece ; but he lifted his face to receive the kiss she asked 
permission to give, saying : 

“ I have tried to do my duty, and perhaps, more than 
my duty, by you, Daisy. Your mother, as you know, de- 
liberately separated herself from her family when she mar- 
ried a man so far beneath her as your father was. But 
when she died, and left you in abject poverty, I forgave 
everything and took you to my home. I have a large 
heart,” he went on, placing his hand in an ostentatious way 
over it — “and it leads me into all manner of impetuous 
things. And I took you into my house, as you know, to be 
the associate of niy refined daughter, when your father’s 
profligacy and lack of pride had left you without those ac- 
complishments which might, had you possessed them, have 
made me proud to exhibit you to my friends as my niece. 
But I don’t regret what I have done for you, my dear, and 
am glad to know that you appreciate it. And now, good- 
night, my dear, good-night.” 

“ Good-night,” Daisy responded, and left the room. 

The softened expression which her face had worn when 
she entered that chamber, was gone wholly from it when 
she went out again, and a hard defiant look had come in its 
place. 

“ I was a fool to care what either of them might think,” 
she muttered between her teeth. “ It is little they’ll care 
what becomes of me, except where it touches them. Uncle 
could have influenced me, but now it is too late.” 

That night Daisy Darrell disappeared from Pinelands. 

With whom, or where, she had flown was a mystery to 
which she had left no clew. 

Guileless as a child, and as ignorant of the ways of the 
wicked world, she had cut loose from the only home she 
knew, and set herself adrift ! 


CHAPTER V. 

“daisy DARRELL HAS GONE AWAY.” 

What had become of Daisy Darrell ? Let us go back 
and see. 

The day before the night of her disappearance she had 
arisen, as she had done for several mornings, terribly de- 
pressed with the idea that Clifford Bancroft had only been 
trifling with her in the soft things he had whispered in 
her ears, and that he had forgotten her — cast her aside, as 
if she were a toy he had wearied of. 


DAT8Y DARRELL. 


She had walked out into the orchard. 

It was a sweet morning — the birds sang in the cool 
shadows of the apple trees; the wind stirred musically in 
the branches ; and Daisy’s April-like spirit caught, as it were, 
the sunlight and melody, and rapidly grew elastic. 

“ See here, Daisy,” clear and ringing came to her, drop- 
ping through the branches of the tallest of the apple-trees, 
the voice of her boy cousin, Harry Fitzgerald. “Here’s 
the cunningest little nest up here you ever saw, and it’s 
got two of the queerest-looking little birds in it ! I believe 
they are young humming-birds !” 

“ A humming-bird’s nest, Harry!” Daisy exclaimed, all 
her really heart-felt anxiety about Clifford Bancroft for- 
gotten in the excitement of the moment. “ Don’t put your 
hand in it, because if you do, the old bird will never go 
back to it again. I’ll come up and peep into it, though.” 

So saying, she threw off her bonnet, and divested her 
small feet of their little slippers, and then she nimbly 
climbed the trunk of the tree, and swung herself from 
limb to limb, with the free grace and ease of a boy poacher. 

While she was hidden up there in thd” branches, among 
the thick leaves, a boy who had been for an hour or more 
skulking about the grounds of Pinelands, and peering 
about as if he were on the watch for some one, crept from 
behind a neighboring tree, and swiftly dropped a folded 
paper into the crown of the bonnet she had left on the 
gi’ass, and rapidly disappeared in the green foliage again. 

When Daisy came down from the tree, dragging Harry 
along with her, she picked up her bonnet and thrust it on 
without noticing its unsuspected c ontents. 

It was only when she removed it again in her own room, 
and the folded paper fell to the floor, that she became 
aware of the fact that some one had been tampering with 
her head-gear while she had been inspecting the bird’s 
nest. 

With her blue eyes wide with wonder she unfolded the 
note and read the words : 

“My Darling, — I will come for you to-night. Be ready 
to go with me. Your lover always, 

“Clifford Bancroft.” 

Daisy read this over with flaming cheeks and palpitating 
heart, and when she had fully taken in its meaning, she 
clapped her hands in childish glee, exclaiming: 

“He hasn’t forgotten me at all! He's coming to-night 
to take me away from this hateful old place ! I am sorry 
to leave Harry, bless his bad old heart! But I am awful 
glad to get away from my lady Geraldine. Won’t she 


23 


DAISY DARRELL. 


open her black eye^ when she finds out 1 have run away 
with her sweetheart, though I” 

So, in a tremor of joyous excitement, she placed her few 
trifling treasures in a bundle of necessary clothing, and 
waited in a bewildered, restless state for the night to 
come. 

With the impetuosity of a thoughtless child she made 
her mind up to take this dangerous leap in the dark ; to 
trust her life, her happiness in the hands of Clifford Ban- 
croft. 

Geraldine had looked in vain for a letter, and on that 
seventh day she said to herself, with her arched brows 
drawn together in a black line across her forehead: 

“ If I don’t hear from him to-morrow, I will write and 
ask an explanation.” 

She could not sleep that night — for the first time she be- 
gan to distrust Clifford Bancroft, or, rather, she began to 
distrust the power of her hold on him. 

With her lips compressed, and with a dark cloud on her 
face, she stood at her window looking out upon the night. 

The sky was a§ clear as crystal, and the moon, full and 
round, shone on it like a silver plate, its light making every 
object on which it fell below jdistinctly visible. 

Her vacant gaze was suddenly changed to one of 
interest. 

On the long grass of the lawn, under the shadowy trees, 
she saw a carriage, drawn slowly by a pair of light-step- 
ping horses, halt, without the breath of a sound coming to 
her from the intervening distance. She saw the carriage 
door open, and a man descended from it and made his way 
under the shadowy trees toward the house. 

In that tall form and graceful but cautious step. Miss 
Fitzgerald thought she detected something so strangely 
familiar that it set her heart to beating stormily, and she 
felt constrained to hold it down by pressing her hand 
heavily over it, while she watched the tall figure, leaning 
from her window, but keeping herself hidden from his 
wandering glance, should it chance to stray that way, in 
the folds of the curtain. 

She saw him halt under a window at the furthest corner 
of the house, and, stooping over, he picked up a handful of 
sand from the walk, which he tossed lightly against the 
glass, and stood and waited awhile. 

Miss Fitzgerald saw him repeat this operation, after an 
intermission of five minutes, and then she saw the window 
raised, and Daisy Darrell’s head appeared, and she heard 
her startled call : 

“ Who’s there?” 

She saw the man lift his hat, so that his face, although 


DAISY DARRELL, 


23 


in the shadow for her, was fully revealed to Daisy, while 
at the same time, he made a cautioning motion of his 
hand. 

Then he went still deeper into the shadow of the house, 
for he went close up to the window, and Daisy leaned out 
toward him, and they held a whispered conference for a 
few minutes, after which she disappeared into her room, 
while he stood and waited, although restlessly, in the deep 
shadow. 

In less than five minutes, a little figure, bonneted and 
shawled, and carrying a bundle as if fixed for traveling, 
joined him, and the two walked hurriedly toward the car- 
riage in waiting, and entered it, and were driven rapidly 
away. 

Geraldine stood staring at the spot where they had dis- 
appeared, like one in a bewildered dream, for at least five 
minutes. Then she started, shaking herself as if she had 
but just awakened from sleep, and going hurriedly along 
the hall to her father’s room, she knocked on the door, and 
soon Colonel Fitzgerald, blinking the mists of slumber 
from his eyes, appeared before her, asking anxiously : 

“ What’s the matter?” 

She answered quietly enough : 

“ Daisy Darrell has gone away with some man in a car- 
riage, and I believe the man was— Clifford Bancroft !” 


CHAPTER VI. 

“l MUST KNOW THE WORST AT ONCE!” 

At that announcement of his niece’s flight in company 
with the man who was his daughter’s afiianced husband, 
and made by that wronged daughter in such a calm, even 
voice, James Fitzgerald stared aghast for a moment or so, 
and then he exclaimed : 

“ Daisy gone with Clifford Bancroft! Why, Geraldine, 
what do you mean? Surely you have been dreaming!” 

“No, I have not been asleep,” the girl answered, speak- 
ing in that same cold, quiet tone, but with a hard, unnatural 
ring very perceptible in it. “I have not been in bed to- 
night, and as I stood at my window, I saw a carriage drive 
onto the lawn, and I saw a man get out of it and go to 
Daisy’s window, and I saw her a few minutes afterward 
drive away with him, I believe the man was Clifford 
Bancroft !” 

Again the old gentleman stared aghast, and ejaculated : 

‘ ‘ Impossible ! Why should Daisy go away at this time of 
night with Clifford Bancroft?” 

As the lamplight streaming through the open door of his 
room fell on his daughter’s face, he noticed that she was 


24 DAISY DARRELL. 

deathly pale, and that her large dark eyes gleamed like 
fire. 

“Surely, surely your are mistaken, my child,” he said, 
tenderness mingling with the amazement that was still in 
his voice. “ Wait until I throw on my dressing-gown, and 
we’ll go to Daisy’s room, and see what is really the matter. 
I dare say we will find her in bed and asleep. ” 

Geraldine said never a word. She stepped aside and 
leaned against the wall, with her hands clasped tightly 
together on her breast, and with her breath coming in short, 
fluttering gasps through her parted lips. 

Her father, carrying a lighted lamp in his hand, and 
arrayed in a long crimson-dressing gown, joined .her in a 
few seconds, and preceded her on his way to Daisy’s room, 
at every step uttering some incredulous word, to which 
she made no response. 

The old gentleman halted at the room of his niece, and 
knocked sharply on the door. 

No answer coming to the summons, he repeated it twice, 
and then he unceremoniously turned the knob and entered, 
and directed the light of the lamp toward the bed. 

It was unoccupied. So was the room, save for his pres- 
ence and that of his daughter, who had halted just inside 
the threshold, and stood with her hand still tightly clasped 
on her breast, and with her face colorless, and her eyes 
gleaming. 

“She is certainly not here,” Colonel Fitzgerald said, 
sharply. 

“I told you that before you came to search for her,” 
Geraldine said, her words still unnaturally calm and cold 
and hard. ‘ ‘ I saw her go away in a carriage in company 
with ” 

She did not finish the sentence, but closed her lips over 
it, while her eyes wandered around the room in search of 
some note, or token of explanation. But no such thing 
had been left. 

“Whoever the man was, I am satisfied in my own mind 
that it was not Clifford Bancroft, ” Colonel Fitzgerald said, 
throwing his gray head proudly, defiantly back. “ He is a 
gentleman, and if he were not he would not dare to do such 
a thing— he would not dare to put such an insult upon me, to 
say nothing of yourself. I have no idea who the man was 
--I didn’t know, indeed, that she had any especial gentle- 
man acquaintance, but I would stake my life that it was 
not Clifford Bancroft !” 

Geraldine moistened her lips with her tongue before she 
responded, always speaking in that unnatural tone : 

“lam not positively sure that the person was he, but I 
think I recognized his general appearance as being his,” 


DAISY DARRELL. 


25 


She did not call his name; she seemed to shrink from 
doing so ; but her father understood her to refer to her 
affianced lover, and as he turned away from the little 
chamber, with his face drawn with perplexity, he said, 
with that proud assertiveness, born of conceit and vanity 
at his high social position : 

“ Clifford Bancroft would not have dared to abscond 
with any other woman so long as he was the betrothed 
husband of my daughter?” 

As he went down the stairs, followed by Geraldine, he 
added : 

^ “I can do nothing to-night, but to-morrow I will look 
into the matter, and I venture to say that I will sift it to 
the bottom by the time the night falls again.” 

^ At the foot of the stairway they separated, she turning 
into her own room, and he into his. 

Geraldine went to her window and stood looking out 
upon the leaden night. 

One thought only was in her mind, and it kept repeating 
itself over and over, taking the form of a question which 
after a time became maddening in its persistency: 

“Was the man Clifford Bancroft? Was the man Clifford 
Bancroft?” 

Over and over again, until more than an hour had passed, 
that question was in her mind, excluding all curiosity in 
regard to Daisy Darrell, for whose sake, if her suspicions 
proved true, he had forsaken her, Geraldine Fitzgerald. 

It was only after the first benumbing surprise had worn 
off, that she took in other features of the situation. Then, 
one by one, and in startling, lightning-like flashes, the de- 
tails of the possible Avrong and insult to her broke into her 
mind. 

If the man was Clifford Bancroft, there could have been 
no cause for his elopement with Daisy Darrell, except an in- 
fatuation for the girl. 

He had never seen Daisy Darrell except during his late 
sojourn at Pinelands; therefore while he had been paying 
court to the heiress of the house, and suing for her hand, 
he had been looking with eyes of favor, and of course 
whispering words of love surreptitiously to the humble but 
pretty dependent of the house, and the love he had pro- 
fessed for Geraldine was but a mockery and a shameless 
deceit. 

Miss Fitzgerald Avas very proud, and she Avas crushed 
Avith the humiliation that such a state of affairs brought 
to her. But thatAvas nothing compared to the deeper feel- 
ing which was like the bitterness of death in her heart. 

When she had given her promise to marry Clifford in 
September, she kneAv that she could only bestow on him 


DAISY DARRELL, 


the added gift of her hand, for her heart was already his-- 
his wholly— his only— his irrevocably. 

She sank down on her knees by the window, and stared 
out with dry eyes on the leaden night, which was slowly 
passing down to the courts of the dawn, and the old ques- 
tion had come to din itself into her mind again: 

“Was the man Clifford Bancroft ? Was the man Clif- 
ford Bancroft 

“I must find out, or the suspense will kill me!” she mut- 
tered, rising with a shiver as the cold, damp breath of the 
gray morning swept over her. ‘ ‘ I can’t wait on father’s 
slow movements, or on the developments of time. I must 
know the worst at once; I must be satisfied. I will start 
for New York this morning. ” 

With this resolve, which required action, the numbness 
seemed to pass from her, and a fever of excitement came in 
its place. 

She arose to her feet, and in the dim light of the early 
day she began to pack her trunks ; and when she met her 
father hours afterward at the breakfast table, she was ar- 
rayed in her traveling garments and she said to him, utter- 
ing the falsehood unblushingly : 

“ Father, I was almost suffocated last night by my old 
heart trouble, and it frightened me so that I concluded 
that I would go to Aunt Margaret’s and put myself under 
Doctor Leverman’s care again.” 

“ You suffered with your heart again, did you ?” the old 
gentleman said, looking anxiously and keenly across the 
table at her, and seeing unmistakable traces of suffering 
on her beautiful face. “ I was hopeful that you were en- 
tirely relieved of those troublesome attacks. Go to your 
Aunt Margaret’s, of course, and put yourself right into 
the hands of Doctor Leverrnan. I will go with you. I had 
intended to institute inquiries in the neighborhood to-day 
after Daisy Darrell ; but your welfare is of more impor- 
tance to me than that of a girl who could so far forget the 
lineage from which she sprung as to elope in the night as 
she did. But it’s the Darrell Wood.” 

He dropped his knife and fork and frowned, and tugged 
at his long beard, while he added : 

“I am glad for you to go to New York, as you seemed 
last night to suspect Clifford Bancroft to have been the ab- 
ductor, and I want you to have the evidence of your own 
eyes in contradiction.” 

Geraldine made no audible response to this, but sipped 
her coffee in a nervous way, while a faint color stained her 
face and a feverish light shone in her eyes. 

Only to herself she said ; 

“ I, too, want the evidence of my own eyes,” 


daisy DARRELL. 


27 


She was fighting then, as she had done all night long, 
against the conviction that the man she had seen walk 
away with his arm around her cousin’s graceful form in 
the shadow of the previous night was her own idolized be- 
trothed husband, ^e clung to the uncertainty, and 
sought to strengthen it with all the power of her nature. 

She might live tortured with cruel doubt, she thought, 
but the absolute certainty of his perfidy toward her would 
either kill or craze her, for that she could not endure ! 

“ I will trust him until I know that he scorned me for 
Daisy Darrell, and then ” 

She did not finish the sentence even to herself, and she 
took her father’s arm, and with a firm, proud step she 
entered the carriage which was to convej^ them to the 
depot. 

So the first step on the journey was taken— the first 
movement in an investigation which was destined to reveal 
the strength and the weakness of human nature, to roll the 
stone from hidden springs in the soul, to test the sort of 
material of which three persons were made. 

Those three were Daisy Darrell, Geraldine Fitzgerald, 
and Clifford Bancroft. 


CHAPTER VII. 

“nothing but death shall part thee and me!” 

Clifford Bancroft, with Daisy at his side in the car- 
riage on the night o£ her elopement with him, gave orders 
to the driver to make all possible haste to the village of 
Dunbar. 

“We will be married, my darling, in time to take the 
early train east,” he said tenderly to Daisy. “ It will be a 
secret marriage, of course, because I don’t want to run in 
the face of my father’s wishes. But after a little time, 
when I have prepared him to see you, and he knows the 
step has been irrevocably taken, I shall be so proud to 
present you to him as a daughter, and I am sure he will 
welcome you as such, and in time he and my mother, and 
my sister Mag, will be as fond of you almost — not quite 
though, for nobody could be that — as I am.” 

“ I don’t care whether they are fond of me or not,” Daisy 
said, in her willful, defiant way, “ so that you are. I don’t 
care who hates me so long as you love me. And you will 
always do that, won’t you?” 

A deep, thrilling earnestness came into her fresh young 
voice, as she put the question to him, and he answered, 
drawing her closer to him, and looking down into her eyes 
in the uncertain light : 


28 DAISY DARRELL. 

“ I will be true to you, forever and ever, as God hears 
me !” 

After a long drive they entered the sleeping village, and 
Clifford gave orders to the driver to halt before a little cot- 
tage showing darkly among its clustering vines in the light 
of the breaking day. 

“Wait here, darling, until I go in and arouse the Eev- 
erend Mr. Crawford,” Clifford said, descending from the 
vehicle, and going through the yard-gate to the house, 
where he rang the bell loudly. 

A minute afterward a gleam of light appeared through 
the transom over the door, and there was the sound of a 
footstep on the carpeted hall. 

Then the key turned in the lock, and an elderly man 

g eered out, lifting the lamp above his head so as to shade 
is eyes from the glare. 

His dark, bright eyes looked keenly into the face of his 
untimely visitor, and .then glanced beyond him at the car- 
riage showing shadow-like at the gate. 

“Are you the Eeverend Mr. Crawford ?” Clifford asked, 
with a sense of embarrassment stealing over him, and with 
a very perceptible thrill in his voice which the good man 
had, perhaps, heard before in similar cases, and had there- 
fore come to interpret, for a smile that was singularly 
winning came into his pale, refined face as he responded : 

“ I am, sir. Will you walk in, and let me know how the 
good Lord has kindly put it in my power to serve you?” 

Clifford Bancroft bared and bowed his head, and followed 
the preacher into his little sitting-room — with a feeling of 
humiliation over him, awakened by a swift, and uninten- 
tional contrasting of himself with this just man. 

“ Mr. Crawford,” he said, halting just inside the door of 
the cozy room, and standing with his hat in his hand, and 
with his eyes downcast and his face flushed, “ I came to 
say that I have called on you to-night to perform a mar- 
riage ceremony. Will you oblige me ?” 

Mr. Crawford reached out his slender hand, and placed 
it kindly on the young man’s shoulder — having deposited 
the lamp on a table ; 

“ I am a servant of God,” he said, his face lighting up, 
and beaming with the inward peace that consciousness 
awakened. “ Whatever he wills me to do that I do, cheer- 
fully, gladly. I trust it is His will that this marriage may 
be performed, and that I may perform it.” 

Clifford Bancroft thought he detected a subtle admoni- 
tion in these words of simple faith, and his face flushed a 
trifle deeper as he said : 

“ It shall be- a marriage on which Heaven shall smile, if 
I can influence it by my good resolutions,” 


DAISY DARRELL. 


29 


The left hand of the preacher pressed more kindly on his 
Shoulder, and his right hand clasped that of the young 
man, as he said, always with his face beaming with in- 
ward peace : 

“God bless you, my son. He always smiles on good 
resolutions, and strengthens you to* carry them out. As 
He shall give me power, I will perform the marriage cere- 
mony you speak of to-night.” 

Somehow, with the sound of this man’s voice in his ears, 
and his touch on his hand, Clifford Bancroft felt himself 
spiritually uplifted, as it were. 

He began to thrill with noble impulses, and to be very 
strong in the resolve to be true and faithful to Daisy Dar- 
rell so long as life should be spared to them ; to leave her 
no room, so far as his truth to her was concerned, to regret 
the step that he had induced her to take that night. 

‘ • The marriage must be secret only to save father’s feel- 
ings, and ” he bit his lip, leaving the sentence unfin- 

ished. He could not mention the name of Geraldine Fitz- 
gerald even to himself, for he could not help feeling that 
however honorable his conduct might be toward Daisy, it 
was not so to Geraldine. 

“It will all come out right, ” he muttered uneasily. ‘ ‘ But 
it would be an awkward thing to confess the matter now, 
and so a secret marriage is better for all parties concerned. 
When the proper time comes I will make it public, and 
then there will be general rejoicing, of course.” 

Thus he soothed his own disturbed conscience, which in 
a vague way, perhaps, hinted of the after-time of darkness 
which should follow that night’s work. 

But he went willfully forward, and Daisy Darrell blindly 
followed where he led. 

There was a marriage that night, or rather that morn- 
ing, in Mr. Crawford’s little parlor, to which there were no 
witnesses save the three officiating parties, and Mr. Craw- 
ford’s gentle, dove eyed wife — a marriage which made 
Daisy Darrell Mrs. Clifford Bancroft. 

“ My wife, we will be true to each other. You shall 
never, as God hears me, regret the step you have taken if 
my love and truth to you can prevent it,” the young hus- 
band said, drawing the pretty little head down on his 
shoulder, as they were being driven away to the railroad 
station to catch the early train eastward bound. 

At that moment, when all his being thrilled with the 
earnestness of his vow, there came no inward conscious- 
ness, no prescience of the future to warn him that he had 
spoken falsely; that in the oath he had taken, and had 
called on God to witness, he had perjured himself ! 

“‘Whom God hath joined together, let no man put 


30 


DAISY DARRELL. 


asunder!’” he repeated-, folding his arms more closely 
around her, and looking down into her trusting blue eyes 
with a world of love in his own. “ Th at is an unnecessary 
injunction, as far as we are concerned, my darling, for 
nothing but death shall part thee and me I” 


CHAPTER VIII. 

“l SHALL NEVER HAVE RESPECT FOR MYSELF AGAIN!” 

“Well, Gerry,” Colonel Fitzgerald said to his daughter 
on the evening of his arrival in New York, “your suspi- 
cion in regard to Clifford Bancroft was wholly at fault, as 
I supposed at the first. I have just seen his father, and he 
assures me that his son has been for the last few days in 
Washington city, lobbying in Congress in order to get a 
bill through the House in which my old friend, Henry 
Bancroft, is very much interested. He tells me that he 
had a note from him this morning, in which he states that 
he will be at home this evening.” 

He was standing in his daughter’s room, stroking his 
long white beard complacently, and he smacked his lips 
over the words in a most self-satisfied manner, which 
seemed to say : 

“ I told you so, and I am never mistaken in any convic- 
tion I may entertain.” 

Geraldine said nothing, but the color swept into her face, 
which had been very pale, and a glad look came into her 
dusky eyes. 

Ah, she had been so miserable, so miserable ! What a 
blessed assurance those words of her father’s were ! What 
a weight they lifted from her heart ! 

When she was left alone, she glanced up at thd clock 
which was ticking away on the mantel, and she fell to 
counting off on her fingers the hours that would probably 
elapse before she could look again into those d^rk, dreamy 
eyes which held for her the very light of her life. 

“He will come to me this evening,” she whisper 3d to her- 
self, surveying her grand beauty in the large mirror before 
which she had taken her stand. “As soon as he learns 
from his father that I am in New York, he will come to 
me ; and I never will doubt him again — never, never. I 
would not live over the last four days for all the gold and 
diamonds in the world !” 

With great care she arrayed herself that evening in her 
most becoming attire— and she exulted in her beauty as 
she had never done before ; and, for once in her life, not 
solely because it was hers, but be< 3 ause he loved it. 

But the evening darkened, and the hours trailed away 


DAISY DARRELL. 


31 


“^eep into the night, and the flowers faded in her hair and 
on her breast, and he did not come. 

Sick with disappointment, and also bitterly resentful 
toward him, she tossed all night long on her sleepless pil- 
low, with her nerves painfully athrill, and with a weight 
of wretchedness pressing on her heart and brain. 

Perhaps he had not returned to the city, or, if he had, 
perhaps his father had neglected to inform him of her pi-es- 
ence in New York ; old people were so forgetful— about the 
aftairs of young people especially, she thought. 

She would write a note and send it to him, and hint to 
him that she would be glad to see him any time that day, 
for she would not leave the house, but would await his 
coming. 

Only a hint to that effect would he necessary, she told 
herself; so she wrote the note, and dispatched it to his 
office earl / after breakfast. 

To that note, in due course of time, she received an an- 
swer, which ran : 

“I will be happy to call on you this afternoon at five 
o’clock. I have an explanation to make to you. 

“Clifford Bancroft.” 

“He has doubtless heard of my vile suspicions against 
him,” she said, with a proud smile curling her haughty 
mouth, “and he is a little indignant, that is why he w,‘:-es 
so curtly.” 

It was half-past five o’clock when his card was brought 
to her, and when she entered the curtained parlor where he 
waited for her in a soft twilight she had never appeared so 
superbly beautiful to him. 

He was a worshiper of beauty, and the rare loveliness of 
the face uplifted to him while she extended her arms, gleam- 
ing like ivory from the filmy lace of her black sleeves, and 
twined them impulsively about his neck, dazzled him. 

“ I am so glad, so glad you have come,” she murmured 
tremulously. ‘ ‘ I have been so miserable ; I have had such 
iiorrible doubts of your truth. But they are all gone now, 
Clifford ; it was insanity in me to^have cherished them for 
an instant, and they will never come again.” 

At that moment Clifford Bancroft would have been glad 
to have died in order to be rid of the sense of shame that 
rushed over him. 

But mingled with that sense of shame was another feel- 
ing — a feeling that thrilled him with exultation. 

This woman— this queen of beauty and grace— loved him 
—loved him with all the strength of her nature. 

He was young, he was a worshiper of beauty, he was 
singularly impressible and impulsive. 


32 


DAISY DARRELL, 


With that rare face uplifted to his, with that low voio^ 
uttering that tender confession in liis ears, the resolve he 
had made to tell her honestly that he liad been mistaken in 
his own heart when he had vowed that he loved her be- 
yond all others, melted into nothingness. 

The words were formed in his mind, but his tongue re- 
fused to utter them. 

He turned faint at the thought of the violent blow he 
would deal her — shattering her great love, her towering 
pride in one cruel stroke — and he instantly abandoned the 
idea of doing so, at least at that interview. 

But the consciousness rushed over him that it was wrong 
—-wrong to stand there with those loving arms trustingly 
folded around his neck, seeing that he was the husband of 
another woman, and had no right, therefore, to listen to 
those tender whispers. 

So, with the color fled from his tace, he disengaged 
himself in a moment — for all this thought had come in 
lightning-like flashes through his mind— from her embrace, 
and seated himself beside her on the sofa, murmuring some 
inarticulate words. 

He knew well the course that honor demanded he should 
follow toward her, and yet he was too much of a coward 
to take it. 

If she had been less blinded by love and joy at her re- 
stored confidence in him, she would have noticed his 
shame-faced look and his inward unrest, and would have 
felt the revival of her sleeping suspicions. But she was 
blinded, and she did not notice. 

The dim light in the curtained room deepened into the 
dusk of nature’s twilight, while they sat there side by side, 
speaking little, and indulging in those long pauses which 
come between the words or trusting lovers. 

Not once was Daisy Darrell’s name mentioned between 
thern, and Geraldine had forgotten her very existence. 
But in her childlike innocence she was constantly present 
in the mind of Clifford Bancroft, seeming to be, as with an 
audible voice, accusing him of treachery to her and of du- 
plicity to Geraldine Fitzgerald. 

The position he was in was torturing. He felt as if he 
should go mad. 

“ I wish I had never gone to Pinelands!” he exclaimed, 
breaking a pause which had fallen between them with sud- 
den vehemence. “ It has ruined me. I shall never have 
respect for myself again !” 

Geraldine lifted her head and stared at him in a dazed 
way. 

“What do you mean ?” she asked, her voice low, but 
hard and strained.' “I demand to know why you wish 


DAISY DARRELL. 33 

you had never gone to Pinelands, and how it has ruined 
you ?” 

In the dim light her dark eyes seemed to burn his with 
the intensity of their gaze, and he turned his head away 
and said tremulously : 

‘ ‘ I cannot tell you now. I am not brave enough to do it, 
but my meaning hinges on tlie fact that I am not worthy 
of you. I am a weak fool — a poltroon whom it is a great 
pity you ever met.” 

She regarded his outburst -as only a bit of self-deprecia- 
tion, and as such she resented it. 

“You are infinitely too good for me,” she said, nestling 
near to him so that her head was touching his shoulder. 
“I am not worthy of you because I doumed you. But 
those doubts taught me how much I loved you. Ah, Clif- 
ford, I should die if anything took you from me. Be true 
to me Clifford, and I will be true to you. 'No other love 
shall ever come into my life. You shall be my all ' in all 
now and forever.” 

Oh, that he might die then and there and be rid of the 
shame that was over him ! Oh, that he had but the cour- 
age to speak the truth, even though it should slay her 
with its bitterness and humiliation ! 

But he had not the courage, and so he went away hear- 
ing her whispered pleading: 

“You will spend every spare moment you have with 
me, won’t you, Clifford?” 

“ The next time I see you,” he said, moistening his lips 
with his tongue, and speaking in a slow, numb way, “I 
will make a^'evelation to you which will surprise you very 
much, and will turn your love for me— if it is real love — 
into hatred. I have made my mind up to that.” 

“ You can make no revelation to me that will make me 
hate you,” she said, shaking her regal head solemnly, ‘“ so 
long as you love me. And you do love me, don’t you?” 

For his life Clifford Bancroft could not have answered 
anything but “ Yes.” 

And with that falsehood on his lips, left her to turn his 
steps toward the little cottage where he had hidden his 
bride of three days. 

CHAPTER IX. 

“he is sorry he married me!” 

Clifford Bancroft walked along the thronged streets 
feeling as thoroughly nervous and uncomfortable as ever 
man might. 

He was terribly out of humor with himself, and he 
was consequently "out of humor with everything else. 


84 


DAISY DARimLL, 


“I am a fool!” he muttered between his teeth an im- 
pulsive, headstrong fool?” 

He was thinking of that daybreak marriage he had 
rushed so headlong into, and yet, it had only been four 
days ago I 

Had he already begun to weary of the pretty little toy 
he had taken to himself that morning to “ keep and to hold 
until death should them part?” 

He stepped into a restaurant and called for a cup of 
strong coffee, for he felt the need of a stimulant. 

Then he walked on again, passing out into a suburb of 
the city, with the softness of the tailing night around him, 
and the glittering stars above him. 

His movements were nervous, and with a slender rattan 
cane he switched off the heads of such hardy weeds as dared 
to lift themselves beside him, so near the sooty, sandy city ; 
and there was something suggestive of great discontent in 
his manner of doing it. 

“What a splendid woman she is!” he muttered after 
awhile, giving expression to his thoughts. “ It is no wonder 
that father and mother and Mag wanted her as an orna- 
ment in our home. They will never be satisfied with 
Daisy, of course, by contrast with her. I don’t know how 
I shall ever muster courage to tell them.” 

He frowned more darkly, and switched the weeds more 
ruthlessly, until he turned into a gate leading into a small 
yard, in the midst of which a tiny cottage stood, embow- 
ered in clustering vines, and presenting a picturesque ap- 
pearance in the radiance of the silvery night. 

He halted inside the gate and uttered an impatient ejacu- 
lation as a graceful little figure came dashing around the 
house, shouting to a small shaggy dog that was pursuing 
her, barking shrilly, and presenting the appearance, in 
the inellow light, of a ball of wool. 

The graceful little figure belonged to Daisy, who was 
flushed and panting with the violence of her exercise, and 
whose muslin dress was torn and soiled. 

She uttered a scream of delight as she caught sight of 
Clifford, and ran up to him and threw her arms around his 
neck— a feat which required her to rise on the tips of her 
little slippers— exclaiming: 

“ I am so glad you’ve come ! Gip and I got tired waiting 
for you, so we’ve been racing in order to pass off the time. 
And would you believe that I can beat him !” 

Clifford Bancroft bent and kissed the pretty face, with 
all the discontent gone from his own. 

“My little darling!” he said, feeling great compunctions 
of conscience for the disloyalty which he had so recently 
been guilty of toward her, and mentally resolving that it 


DAISY DARRELL. 


35 


should never happen again. “My little darling, I could 
not come any earlier; I was detained by — business.” 

His face flushed crimson, and he turned his head aw^ay 
from her when he said that, remembering the nature of 
that business, and with whom it had been connected. 

He drew her hand through his arm and walked with her 
to the house, and seated himself beside her on the small 
portico under the trailing vines. 

“ I want to talk to you/’ he said. “ I want to tell you 
something.” 

“ You speak so solemnly,” she said, shrugging her plump 
shoulders, and making a pretty grimace, “ that I’m afraid 
to hear it. I ani afraid you are going to tell me something 
dreadful.” 

Looking seriously down into her face, with his black 
brows drawn discontentedly together, he said: 

“ I want you to try to be less hoidenish, and more lady- 
like, Daisy. My mother and sister are very fastidious, and 
I would not dare to present such an unrefined person to 
them as a daughter and sister.” 

He had spoken with thoughtless bluntness, without con- 
sidering the effect it might have on his sensitive young 
wife, and he was shocked when she drew herself from him 
and burst into tears, crying passionately : 

“You are ashamed of me. That’s why you married me 
secretly, and you are sorry for doing it already !” 

He denied the charge, of course, and with her head pil- 
lowed on his breast, he soothed her with tender assurances 
of his devotion. But the cloud of doubt and suspicion 
which was destined to widen and darken until it broke in 
a desolating tempest over her life, at that hour made its 
appearance on her sky. Thenceforth the cold shadow of 
distrust lay between her and him, a hideous specter which 
she could not exorcise, struggle against it as she might and 
did. 

Keenly alive to the slightest hint of coldness, as the 
weeks fiew by she noticed that there was a surely widen- 
ing chasm between herself and her husband. 

He came in late at night often, ana at such times he was 
irritable and fault-finding, and was apt to criticise Daisy’s 
hoidenish manners with cutting severity. 

“ He is sorry he married me— he would be glad to be free 
from me !” she sobbed passionately to herself. “ He leaves 
me here alone day after day, and nobody with me but 
Bridget. He never takes me anywhere with him, and of 
course, it is because he is ashamed of me ! He knows that 
I never attended an opera in my life, and I begged him to 
take me to-night to see ‘ Norma,’ and he wouldn’t do it. 


36 


DAISY DARRELL. 


He said he had an engagement ! I think he always has en- 
gagements to keep him from giving me any of his time !” 

While she was crying and muttering angrily to herself, 
Bridget, the Irish servant, entered the room, and seeing her 
pretty little mistress in tears, she exclaimed: 

“ Is it ony thing has gone wrong wid ye, hinny?” 

“I want to go to the opera to-night, Bridget, and Mr. 
Bancroft won't take me !” Daisy responded, chokingly. 

“ Is it that that ails ye?” the good-natured:girlJresponded, 
patting her mistress’ short, flaxen curls. ‘ ‘ The villain of 
the wurld he is, not to take ye. But sure ye can go ony- 
how; the two of us will sthale a march on him, and we'll 
jist shlip off and go to the opery'by ourselves.” 

“Good!” Daisy exclaimed, clapping her hands, while her 
flushed face beamed with anticipated pleasure. “We will 
hire a hack, and you and I will go together, Bridget, and 
Clifford need never know anything about it.” 

So it was that Daisy Bancroft, as if driven by a cruel 
destiny, appeared at the opera that night. 

What a flutter of excitement she was in ; and how brill- 
iant the light was in the hall, and how beautiful the ladies 
looked, in their silks and laces and jewels, and how hand- 
some the gentlemen appeared in their evening costumes ; 
what a fluttering of niany-colored fans there was, stirring 
the scented atmosphere like wings of brilliant birds ! 

That scene in all its grandeur remained always with Daisy, 
as if it were seared upon her memory with a red-hot iron. 

She was sitting on the edge of one of the aisles, and just be- 
fore the curtain was to rise a gentleman and lady swept 
past her on their way to a private box, and an old man in 
front of her whispered audibly to the young girl beside him : 

“ That lady is tlie beautiful Miss Fitzgerald, of Kentucky. 
She and the gentleman Avith her are to be married in Sep- 
tember.” 

Hearing that, Daisy turned her eyes with a start on the 
couple who were just entering the box. 

As she did so, she sprung to her feet, uttering a smothered 
cry. 

In the gentleman who was to be married to the beautiful 
Miss Fitzgerald in September, she had recognized her own 
lawfully, -if secretly, wedded husband— Clifford Bancroft ! 

Was she dying? She was growing cold and blind, and 
the room seemed to be reeling about in a mad dance, in 
which she held only the sight of those two— those two 
who were to be married in September! 

She made no effort to control herself ; she had no thought, 
no care for herself, yet the momentary darkness passed 
away, and she had not lost consciousness even for an in- 
stant. 


DAISY DARRELL. 


37 


She was deathly pale, and she was trembling iolently. 

“ I am ill — I must go home,” she whispered to Bridget. 
“ I shall faint if I stay here; take me out into the air.” 

The warm-hearted Irish girl instantly threw her strong 
arm around the slender waist of her mistress, feeling her 
swaying in her claSp as if she werfe about to fall at every 
step, and thus supported her to the carriage, in which they 
were driven rapidly back to the little vine-wreathed cot- 
tage where the happiest days of poor little Daisy’s life had 
been spent, but where now the night of terrible despair 
had fallen in impenetrable blackness over her. 

“Sure, I’ll stay wid ye, hinny,” Bridget said, as Daisy 
threw herself across the bed in her own room. 

“No, no; there is nothing of any consequence the mat- 
ter,” her mistress responded, with her arm across her eyes, 
and speaking in a slow, nuiiib way: “Leave me alone; I 
Avould rather be alone.” 

The girl lingered for a few minutes, and as Daisy lay as if 
she were going to sleep, she finally stole from the room. 

How long the desolate young wife lay there staring her 
misery dumbly in the face she herself never knew, for she 
took no count of time. She only knew that a great light 
had seemed to be suddenly snuffed out, leaving her In utter 
darkness. 

She was naturally so light of heart that this great sorrow 
acted upon her as it does on all such natures — it utterly 
crushedTier. 

In the mental storm raging within her, which was all 
the more oppressive for being voiceless, a hundred words 
and incidents connected with her husband in the past few 
weeks came to her like lightning flashes, throwing light 
upon what had been mysterious, and revealing hidden 
mainsprings. 

She understood it all now — his absences from her, his 
moodiness when with her. 

“ Geraldine was his first love; he never really cared for 
me,” she said, drearily, to herself. “He is sorry he mar- 
ried me — he would be ^ad to be rid of me.” 

When she said that, she arose slowly and stiffly from 
her bed, and went across the room and threw open a win- 
dow, and kneeling down beside it, she stared, wide-eyed, 
out upon the black night. 

She heard the lonesome throbbings of the heart of the 
great city, which was subdued in sleep, but is never wholly 
silent, and it seemed to be beating a funeral march in com- 
pany with her own heart. 

There was one desire strong within her — that was, to re- 
lieve Clifford Bancroft of the burden she felt she had be- 


38 DAISY DARRELL. 

come to him ; and after awhile that desire culminated in a 
wild purpose. 

She arose suddenly, and drawing the light scarf which 
she had worn to the opera close around her shoulders, she 
stepped through the open window, and wandered away 
aimlessly through the black night. 


CHAPTER X. 

“it is little I CAN DO FOR YOU!” 

It was in that darkest, dreariest hour of all the twenty- 
four — the hour immediately preceding the dawn — that 
Daisy wandered away from the roof which had sheltered 
her during the brief weeks of her married life. 

Where should she go? 

In the feverish state of her mind she could form no 
plan. 

She seemed to be incapable of any thought save that 
Clifford was tired of her. That he would rejoice to be rid 
of her, that he might be free to woo and win his first love, 
Geraldine Fitzgerald. 

As to the legality of that proceeding on his part, no 
thought entei’ed her mind. She only felt sick at heart — 
sick with misery and disappointment. 

She was only impelled by one impulse in her flight, and 
that was to get out of New York, to leave the horrible city 
as far behind as possible. 

So she mechanically followed the road leading out of the 
suburbs into the country. 

It was a way she had never traversed before, and the 
darkness through which she wandered was so intense that 
she could not even see the cottages that lined it upon either 
side as' she walked on in a straight direction. 

After awhile the dim gray of the dawn began to struggle 
through the darkness. 

Where was she? How far from the little vine-wreathed 
cottage she had left forever ? 

Suddenly this wonder stole into Daisy’s benumbed mind, 
and stirred for the first time since she had seen her hus- 
band and Geraldine at the opera the mental torpor which 
seemed to be over lier. 

In the faint but momentarily increasing light, she stood 
still, and glanced about. 

She had walked long and rapidly, but she was still in the 
suburbs of the great city she had flown from, and which 
she felt an almost insane desire to lose sight of— as one 
does of any spot where some great calamity has befallen 
them. 

The scent of its smoke and the faint sounds of its rc- 


DAISY DARRELL, 


awakening life, came to her on the sluggish morning air, 
and it sickened her. 

“ It is a fitting home for a person as false as he is!” she 
muttered, giving involuntary utterance to the first unkind 
thought of her husband which had come to her. 

At that moment, as she turned to pursue her way, she 
caught sight of an object on the side of the road. 

Burdened with a sense of misery and bitter wrong, Daisy 
passed by, noticing, in an unthinking way, that the object 
was a woman — a beggar, probably. 

“ I’m a beggar myself.” 

Daisy muttered that assertion to herself in a hard, bitter 
tone, but it brought to her a sudden consciousness of her 
really destitute condition. 

She was homeless — she was penniless ! 

She had nowhere to lay her head, save on the grass and 
stones of the wayside. 

She turned and went back to where the woman was sit- 
ting in a collapsed position, with her face hidden on her 
knees. 

Her clothing- was so worn that it hung in tatters on her 
meager frame; and she shivered as if she were cold. 

Daisy was too heart-sick — too much overburdened with 
her own trouble, to feel any pity for the sorrows of others. 
But she entertained a fellow-feeling for the woman. 

Was not she herself poor, desolate, and an outcast? 

“ What is the matter ?” she asked, looking down on the 
crouching figure. ' 

The woman lifted her bare head with its tangle of flaxen 
hair, and turned a haggard face toward the questioner.r. 

Her face, with its bright, hollow eyes, indicated by its 
mingled expression of misery and degradation and de- 
fiance, what manner of life hers had been, and yesterday 
morning Daisy w-ould have shrunk from the pollution of 
her near presence. 

But not this morning— she saw in her only a woman, 
poor, shelterless, friendless, and a chord of sympathy went 
out of her heart to her. 

“ What’s the matter ?” the woman said repeating Daisy’s 
question, and shivering so that her teeth chattered behind 
lier bloodless lips— “ I am cold, and I’ll soon be colder.” 

She hugged her knees with her emaciated arms, and 
dropped her face down on them again, with a shiver run- 
ning over her at every breath. 

“ I am as poor as you are, and it’s little I can do for you,” 
Daisy said bitterly. 

But she unwrapped the blue shawl from her head and 
shoulders, and bending over the woman she gently forced 


40 


DAISY DARRELL. 


her to raise herself so that she could knot it securely 
around her poor shivering figure. 

Having done that, she went on her aimless way, glancing 
hack only once, and then she saw that the woman had 
arisen and was tottering off; her wavering steps were 
turned toward the great sheet of water growing rosy now 
with the wine-flush of the rising sun. 

It was the last glimpse Daisy ever caught of her, and she 
certainly had no suspicion of the important part in her own 
affairs which that wreck of womanhood was destined to 
play. 

Those two desolate ones went on their separate ways — 
one toward the shining water, and the other toward the 
forest whose tall tree-tops formed a dark line against the 
distant horizon. 

Daisy made her way toward that line. There was an 
undefined idea in her mind that she would feel safer in the 
heart of that forest ; and it did not appear to he very far 
in the distance. 

But her eyes had deceived her, for the sun had climbed 
into the middle of the sky and her feet were wretchedly 
tired before she reached it. 

Her head was aching with a dull, heavy pain, and every- 
thing seemed to be swimming before her eyes. 

Suddenly the trees which she had drawn so near to 
seemed to enter into a mad dance, accompanied by the 
most discordant strains, that seemed to be clashing against 
her brain, and then thick darkness settled over it all, and 
she lay in a dead faint on the road. 

Utter oblivion had fallen over her; a blessed uncon- 
sciousness of her desolation and misery. 

Clifford Bancroft, with his dreamy eyes gazing tenderly 
down into the beaming orbs of Geraldine Fitzgerald, 
might whisper vows of love to her there in the very pres- 
ence of his wronged wife, but it would bring no flush of 
indignation into those marble cheeks ; no gleam of anger 
into those closed eyes. 

Lying there on the road, with the sun beaming on her 
upturned face, and with the wandering breeze stirring the 
rings of her hair, Geraldine Fitzgerald and Clifford Ban- 
croft — and love and sorrow — all were to Daisy as if they 
had never been. 

Happy it would be for her, perhaps, if she should never 
awaken to consciousness of them again. Happy for her, 
perhaps, if she could lie in that death-like state for all time. 

While poor Daisy had been making her way forward, 
lured by the dark line of the distant, forest, the miserable 
outcast around whom she had knotted her shawl, was totter- 


DAISY DARRELL, 


41 


ing on in a different direction, but also lured by an object 
lying in the distance. 

That object was the shining water. 

On she went, slowly but surely, lessening the distance 
between herself and the inviting flood. 

After awhile her reeling steps brought her to the margin, 
and with her feet touched by the waves that crawled out 
with drowsy, soothing murmurs, she halted an instant, 
and her lips moved with some inaudible words— perhaps 
with a prayer. 

Then she reached her arms imploringly out, and threw 
herself into the water. 

There was a plashing and then a gurgling sound, and the 
flood closed over the poor form which was wrapped in 
Daisy’s shawl, and on which was embroidered the word 
“ Daisy,” 


CHAPTER XI. 

“l FOUND HER LYING ON THE ROADSIDE!” 

Like a broken lily Daisy lay there on the edge of the 
forest with the branches of an oak tree drooping pityingly 
over her, and with the wandering breeze tenderly kissing 
her upturned face, and with the sunlight dropping a cross 
of gold through the shadow of the tree on her breast. 

Less than ten minutes after she had fallen there, and 
that merciful oblivion had come to her, a light spring 
wagon, drawn by a gentle white horse, rolled briskly down 
the turnpike road. 

The driver of the horse, and the only occupant of the 
wagon, was a fair-complexioned countryman, who had 
soft blue eyes, and pale gold hair and mustache. , 

“ Why, Dan, what’s that?” 

As he addressed this query in a tone of astonishment to 
the gentle horse, he drew rein with his eyes fixed in a 
wide, wondering stare on the prostrate form of Daisy. 

He sprung out of the vehicle, and with hasty steps went 
to her, and halted beside her, and looked down at her, with 
a world of pity breaking into his soft eyes. 

“ Is she dead, I wonder?” 

Muttering that in an unsteady voice, he dropped down 
on his knee beside her and bent over her, placing his hand 
reverently on her forehead, and then on her heart. 

“She has only fainted, I think,” he muttered. “ Thank 
God!” 

Then he cast a bewildered glance around. There was no 
one in sight — the last house he had passed on the road was 
more than a mile distant. 


42 


DAISY DARRELL. 


There was a troubled look on his honest face, but it 
cleared away with a sudden brightening as he muttered : 

“I’ll take her home to mother. It’s the best thing I can 
do. Mother ’ll bring her around all right — poor little 
thing!” 

The last words were muttered into Daisy’s deafened ear 
as he lifted her gently in his arms and deposited her ten- 
derly in the bottom of the covered wagon — with his coat 
folded under her head for a pillow. 

Many a time, during the half-mile drive which followed, 
his soft eyes turned pitying glances on the graceful figure 
lying so still in its beauty — so touching in its utter uncon- 
sciousness and helplessness. Many a time after such 
glances he drew his sleeve across his eyes and muttered: 

“ Poor thing — poor thing I” 

When the wagon at last turned into a large gate, and 
slowly made its way among tall trees to an old-fashioned 
farm-nouse, a heavy weight seemed to be lifted from the 
young man’s mind, and as he drew up before the door, he 
called out in a cheerful voice :* 

“ Mother, mother! Gome here, mother!” 

“ Keep your patience, I’m coming!” was responded by a 
clear, feminine voice, and an instant after an old woman, 
with shrewd black eyes that glittered with much of the 
fire of youth, appeared in the doorway. 

“John Goldman, will you please to inform me, what in 
the name of Old Nick you’re taking out of that wagon!” 
she exclaimed, with her small hands uplifted on either 
side of her withered face. 

‘ ‘ I don’t know who she is, mother ; I found her lying on 
the roadside, and I put her in the wagon and brought her 
home to you,” John responded, advancing to the house, 
holding poor Daisy in his arms as if she were a very limp, 
as well as a very large, doll. 

“The mischief you did!” the old lady responded in a 
voice exceedingly gruff and threatening, but stepping aside 
in order to allow her son to pass into the house with his 
burden, “And will you please to inform me how you 
dared to bring such a peck of trouble home to me?” 

“I dared to do it because I knew what a good, warm 
heart my old mother has, and that she would do all that a 
mother could for the poor, half-dead little thing. So I 
brought her home to you — and now where must I take 
her?” 

Talking thus confidently John was following in the wake 
of his mother down the wide, old-fashioned hall. 

“Take her into my room,” the old lady said, always 
speaking gruffly, but with that peculiar gruffness which is 
so readily detected as counterfeit. “ It’s more homelike— 


DAISY DARRELL, 43 

to me — and I suppose I shall have to be with her and nurse 
her.” 

“I know you, mother. You think it will be more home- 
like for her when she opens her eyes — if she ever does — 
poor little thing !” John responded, tenderly placing Daisy 
on the cool white bed, and then drawing his sleeve across 
his eyes to wipe away the mist which had arisen in them 
as be looked down on the pretty, pale face, which was so 
childlike in its age and expression. 

“ There’s no time to be crying over her, and ‘poor little 
thing ’-ing her,” Mrs. Goldman exclaimed with that coun- 
terfeit sharpness. “ You’d a precious sight better be try- 
ing to put some life into her — if she isn’t clear dead. Hand 
me the camphor, and then go down into the cellar and 
bring me a bottle of wine.” 

John turned with great- alacrity to do her bidding, and 
in a few minutes they had the satisfaction of seeing their 
exertions to restore Daisy to consciousness rewai'ded with 
success. 

After awhile her lips parted with a fluttering breath, her 
eyelids quivered, and John with instinctive delicacy shrar^k 
out of the range of her vision should she unclose her eyes. 

“It would seem more homelike, maybe, to see mother’s 
face than mine,” he said to himself. 

So it was on the shriveled but still attractive face of 
Mrs. Goldman that the eyes of the desolate young wife 
rested, when, with returning consciousness, the gold- 
fringed lids were lifted from them. 

“ Where am I ?” Daisy asked, looking worideringly into 
the face of the old woman, and feeling strangely bewil- 
dered. 

“You are among friends, and where you will be taken 
care of,” Mrs. Goldman responded, a little brusquely, it is 
true, but not harshly, and her hand was gentle in its touch 
on the short, flaxen curls. “Don’t ask any questions 
now, for I won’t answer any, but shut your eyes and go to 
sleep if you can.” 

Daisy felt very weak, very apathetic. She had neither 
strength nor energy to resist that commanding power, 
even if she had been more averse to obey. So, without 
uttering another word, she closed her eyes again like a 
tired child, and like a tired child she drifted out into a deep, 
refreshing sleep. 

Mrs. Goldman, seeing her charge thus soundly slumber- 
ing, closed the windows so as to shut out the garish day, 
and stole softly from the room. 

In the hall she encountered John, who was pacing rest- 
lessly but noiselessly up and down on the bright carpet 
covering the floor. 


44 


DAISY DARRELL. 


As the old lady appeared he asked in an eager but sub' 
dued voice : 

“ How is she, mother?” 

“ She’s asleep now. I think she will soon be all right,” 
the old lady responded. “ She had only fainted. I wonder 
who she is, and to whom she belongs?” she added, mus- 
ingly. 

A warm color came into John’s honest face, and a warm 
light into his blue eyes. 

“ I don’t know who she is nor to whom she belongs,” 
he said softly, running his fingers through his short hair 
until it stood on end, and looking straight into the old 
lady’s face. ‘ ‘ But I do know one thing, and that is — 
that— that— I wish she belonged to us, mother. She 
might be my sister, you know.” 

John had grown painfully embarrassed, and he floun- 
dered in his speech. 

“You’re a simpleton, John Goldman!” his mother re- 
torted, bluntly. “ You’ve fallen in love with her— that’s 
what s the matter — and I’d like for you to inform me what 
you know about her! She may be, and very likely she is, 
one of the very worst baggages in New York. I wouldn’t 
turn a sick dog out of my house ; but when she gets well, 
she’ll have to post off, as sure as you’re a foot high, John 
Goldman !” 

“You’re not the woman to judge anybody unheard, 
mother,” John said, placing his arm around the still pretty 
shoulders of his mother. “ Wait until you hear what she 
has to say, poor little thing !” 

“I think I’ve made my mind up about her,” the old 
lady said, compressing her lips. “As sure as you live, 
there’s something wrong about that girl, John Goldman!” 

Mrs. Goldman, having emphatically made that declara- 
tion, went away in the direction of the kitchen, and her 
son went down to the spring, which gurgled musically in 
the cool shadow of the ravine near by, to bring a bucket 
of fresh water. 

“ I want some fresh water in the house when she wakes,” 
John muttered to himself; and he fell to speculating about 
that sleeping girl who had so unexpectedly fallen under 
his roof, and into his hands, as it were. 

In his own mind he indignantly repudiated his mother’s 
avowal that “there was something wrong about her.” 

“I would be willing to stake my life on it that she is as 
gopd as gold,” he said to himself, dreamily dipping up the 
clear, cool water. “ When she wakes she will explain the 
mystery that seems to hang over her, even to mother’s 
entire satisfaction, I believe.” 


DAISY DARRELL. 


45 


But in that expectation John Goldman was destined to 
be wofiilly disappointed. 

For when Daisy awoke, it was with the delirium of 
brain-fever over her, and the thread by which she clung 
to life was of the slenderest, and threatened from hour to 
hour to break, and let her fall into the grave which seemed 
to be. yawning to receive her. 

And John Goldman assisted his mother in watching 
over her, with such deep solicitude, such strained anxiety, 
that it actually wore the rich color from his face, and left 
dark shadows under his eyes as the days, each fraught with 
more danger to her life than the previous one, dragged 
slowly by, and the thread holding her over the grave 
grew more and more slender. 


CHAPTER XII. 

‘‘do you know where your wife is?” 

When Bridget Conner, Daisy’s faithful and attached 
maid, discovered the absence of her mistress when she 
went to her room to call her to breakfast, she was sur- 
prised, but not alarmed. 

“ Sure the cr’ature’s gone out for a walk ; and its through 
the winder she got, too, ’’she added, laughing, as she leaned 
out through the casement and saw the print of the little 
feet in the soft sod below. “I’ll kape the breakfast nice 
and warrum for her, for sure it’s hungry she’ll be, the 
darlint.” 

But the delicate viands which her loving care kept warm 
and moist were destined to spoil at last, for the day wore 
on, and the night fell, and Daisy did not return. 

“ Sure, but I wish the masther would come, or that I’d 
know where to look fur ’im,” Bridget said to herself, lean- 
ing over the gate, and staring up and down the lamp- 
' lighted street. 

She had grown uneasy at her mistress’ prolonged absence, 
and every moment added to her feverish unrest. 

“ Arrah wisha — why don’t they come, one or other of 
’em? Sure it’s crazy I’ll go wid de worry !” she muttered, 
frowning and shrugging her shoulders uneasily. “I can’t 
rist here, so I’ll go up the street and see can’t I find him or 
her.” 

So saying, she opened the gate and passed out, and went 
hurriedly along the pavement, staring anxiously about. 

The streets were thronged with people intent on business 
or pleasure, but neither Daisy nor Clifford was among 
them, and Bridget went on and on, up one square and 
around another, looking eagerly into every face she met, 
but seeing neither of those she sought. ' . , * ' - 


46 


DAISY DARRELL. 


At last, as she was going over a crossing, she aiaited to 
allow a carriage to pass. It was an open carriage, silver- 
mounted and crimson cushioned— with a liveried driver 
and footman in attendance, and drawn by a pair of highly 
mettled horses. 

But it was not the elegance of the turnout which elicited 
the sudden cry of delight that broke from the lips of 
Bridget Conner. 

A gentleman and lady were occupying the vehicle, and 
in the gentleman she recognized her master, Clifford Ban- 
croft. 

He did not notice her, for he was talking to the richly 
dressed lady beside him, and in an instant the carriage 
had dashed past Bridget, leaving her staring after it in a 
dazed way. 

But it was only fora moment that she stood thus staring 
forlornly, and then she started away, running and shout- 
ing after the carriage with all her might. But the mettled 
horses distanced her in a few minutes — and it was lost to her 
sight in a sudden turning. 

“Oh, wurra, wurra! Whatever will I do?” Bridget ex- 
claimed, tears of vexation and perplexity beginning to 
course down her flushed cheeks. 

“ What’s the matter, woman?” 

It was a policeman who asked the question, having 
caught her exclamation. 

“ It’s the gentleman in the carriage that turned the cor- 
ner a bit ago that I wanted to spake to,” Bridget said, 
dashing the drops impetuously from her eyes. “I live 
wid his wife, and she’s gone since last night, and I don’t 
know where she is, and I want to ax him does he know, 
but I don’t knov/ where to find him !” 

“What’s his name?” the policeman inquired. 

“ It’s Clifford Bancroft,” the woman answered, “and I 
don’t know where to find ’im. He was in that carriage 
^wid a lady — but she wasn’t his wife — and I couldn’t make 
him hear me, and I don’t know where he’s gone to.” 

Her trouble seemed to be a matter of small consequence 
to the policeman, who had been so much accustomed to 
deal with murders and burglaries. So he turned without 
another word, and started to pass on, but Bridget detained 
him with her hand on his arm. 

“ Can’t ye tell me how I’ll find him?” she asked. 

“Go to his place of business and inquire for him,” the 
guardian of the peace said. “If you don’t know where 
that is, look in a ‘directory,’ and you’ll find out. You’ll 
find one there.” 

He pointed into the office of a large business house be- 
fore which they were standing, and made as if he would 


DAISY DARRELL. 47 

f^o off, but still Bridget’s detaining hand on liis arm held 
him, 

“ Coom and go wid me,'’ she said imperatively. “ Sure 
I don’t know narthing about the ‘ therectory.’ ” 

The policeman offered no objection. He turned stoically, 
and went to the office with her. 

He went up to the “ directory,” which was lying on the 
office -counter, and turned the leaves. 

^ ” What business is he in ?” he asked, and Bridget stand- 
ing anxiously beside him answered : 

“ I think he’s a liar.” 

“ Lawyer, you mean,” the man said, rapidly turning the 
pages, and in a minute he read : 

“ J. S. & Clifford Bancroft, No. 764 Court Place.” 

“No. 764 Court Place,” Bridget repeated. “I know 
where it is. I’ve a sisther that has a son livin’ on that 
sthrate. I'll go there and lave worred at Mr. Bancroft’s 
office, if he ain’t there, that his wife’s gone, and I don’t 
know where she’s gone to.” 

With which emphatically spoken resolve, she hurried 
out of the hotel, and started swiftly up the brilliantly 
lighted street. 

Her course led past the opera-house where she had gone 
the night before witli Daisy. 

There were a number of carriages drawn up in front of it, 
and among them, Bridget caught sight of one Avhich re- 
minded her of that in which she had seen Clifford Ban- 
croft. 

She made hei' way through the crowd of vehicles to that 
particular one. 

“ Whose carriage is this ?’’ she inquired of the driver, 
who was indolently reclining on his high perch, and who 
regarded her superciliously as he answered : 

“ Judge Bancroft’s.” 

“ And where’s the gentleman gone to ?” Bridget asked. 

“He’s gone Avherever it suits him,” the man ansAvered 
impudently. “ And I don’t knoAv as it’s any of j^our busi- 
ness to knoAV.” 

The woman’s Irish temper flashed up in an instant. 

“ Hould a civil tongue in yer head, ye dirty spalpeen!” 
she exclaimed, brandishing her fist menacingly. “ I asked 
ye a civil question, and it’s a civil answer I want. Mr. 
Bancroft’s wife’s gone, and I don’t know Avhere she is, and 
I want to tell him.” 

“You’re on the wrong scent, then, old lady,” the driA^er 
said, again speaking insolently. “For Mr. Clifford Ban- 
croft hasn’t got a wife. But if he has good luck he’ll haA^e 
one in four AA^eeks’ time. I brought him and the lady he’s 
going to marry to the opera here to-night.”* 


48 


DAISY DARRELL. 


“YouVe toiild one lie, but you’ve followed it with the 
truth I want to get at,” Bridget responded, curtly. “/ 
know he’s got a wife, or he had one last night, poor, dear 
little cr’athur! Wherever can she be to-night, I wonder?” 

Muttering that, she turned away and hid herself in an 
obscure corner to wait until the opera should be over, and 
to watch for Clifford Bancroft in the crowd that would 
stream out from it. 

It seemed to her a long, long time before the noise of 
tramping feet and of many blended voices warned her that 
the evening's entertainment was over. 

She was terrified lest she should miss seeing him in the 
surging multitude, 

“ I’ll watch for him to get into the carnage,” she mut- 
tered, whereupon she turned her determined eyes on the 
silver- mounted, crimson-lined vehicle which she had 
learned belonged to Judge Bancroft. 

After a minute or so she saw it move up to the side- 
walk, and saw the footman descend from his perch and 
throw open the door. 

Then she pressed breathlessly through the crowd. 

Clifford Bancroft was just in the act of helping the 
elegantly attired lady — who was Miss Geraldine Fitzger- 
ald~into the carriage, when Bridget grasped his arm, 
exclaiming volubly : 

“ Do you know where your wife is? She’s gone, and I 
can’t find her !” 

In the light of the street lamp, she saw a vivid color 
break into Clifford Bancroft’s swarthy face, and a startled 
look came into the great black eyes of Miss Fitzgerald, who 
was just in the act of stepping into the carriage, but who 
halted as if she had been paralyzed with astonishment. 


CHAPTER XIII. 

“it is a dead body they are taking to the morgue!” 

Covered with confusion, Clifford Bancroft stood for an 
instant staring dumblj^ into the excited countenance of 
Bridget Conner, then he shut his lips together and pushed 
her aside, and turned w ith his usual deferential manner to 
Geraldine. 

“ Let me assist you into the carriage,” he said, touching 
her arm, and she mechanically stei>ped into the vehicle, 
and he sprung in, and seated himself beside her, giving 
orders ‘to the driver to take them to the young lady’s 
aunt’s, where she wns still visiting. 

As they rolled away, Bridget stood staring after them 
with her lips puckered comically. 

“ Sure, it’s on a fool’s errand I’ve been; dor he know^s all 


DAISY DARRELL, 


49 


about where she is, or he wouldn’t take it so aisy-like. But 
what right has a married man like him to be shparkin’ 
around with a pretty young woman, an’ his own true wife 
not in sight? Sure, if he Avas my husband I’d t’ach him 
betther!” 

Bridget’s indignant soliloquy was brought to an end by 
finding herself penned in by the crowding vehicles, and 
she made her way to the pavement, and on to the little 
vine- wreathed cottage again, from which the pretty little 
mistress had so suddenly and mysteriously disappeared. 

In the meantime the carriage containing Clifford Ban- 
croft and Miss Fitzgerald was rolling rapidly on to the 
palatial residence of Mrs. Margaret Fitzgerald, Geraldine’s 
widowed aunt. 

Geraldine’s glittering eyes were fixed on the flushed face 
of Clifford Bancroft, and her voice was sharply imperative 
as she asked ; 

‘‘ What did she mean by saying your wife was gone?” 

The light from the carriage lamps fell full on his face as 
he turned it toward her and answered, Avith an undertone 
of angry impatience in his voice : 

“ You certainly know that the woman mistook me for 
some one else, don’t you? You certainly know that I have 
no wife.” 

As he uttered the falsehood his cheeks flushed with 
shame, and he turned his head aAvay with a sense of his 
dishonor bitter upon him, 

Geraldine drew a long breath of relief. The suspicion of 
him having been DaiSy Darrell’s abductor, which she had 
abandoned weeks ago, had come back to her with re- 
doubled keenness at Bridget’s Avords. . 

His assertion set it to rest again, and a quivering smile 
came to her lips as she said: 

“ The woman’s words about your wife reminded me of 
something I had suspected you of the week after you left 
Pinelands.” 

He turned a quick, nervous glance upon her, and then 
looked away again without speaking, while she went on: 

“ It has been on my mind to tell you of it several times, 
but I felt. that it Avould be an insult to you, so I kept si- 
lence on the subject; but I will tell you now. Do you re- 
member seeing a young girl at Pinelands— a blue-eyed, 
light-haired, pretty blonde, named Daisy Darrell ?” 

- This time he did not glance toward her, but kept his 
face still in the shadow, as he responded in a nervous way : 

“ I saw you at Pinelands. Do you expect me to remem- 
ber any one else very distinctly ?” 

At that moment he Avished, as he had done many, many 
times before, that he never had seen Daisy Darrell, Avhose 


50 


DAISY DARRELL. 


blonde beauty and childish ways had bewitched him into 
committing the folly of that secret marriage, thereby 
binding to his life a little ignoramus — so he called her to 
himself— whom he was afraid to present to his haughty 
family as his wife. 

Miss Fitzgerald tossed her handsome head, and uttered 
a low, pleased laugh. Then she proceeded to tell him all 
she knew of Daisy’s disappearance, and of the striking 
likeness her abductor bore to himself as she saw him in 
the uncertain moonlight. 

Always keeping his face turned from her in the shadow, 
he listened. It was an effort for him to utter a word, but 
as she paused in the narration, he forced himself to ask: 

“ Did you ever hear what became of the girl?” 

“No,” Geraldine answered indifferently. “ As she was 
father’s niece he felt compelled to institute inquiry for her, 
but he failed to discover a single clew to her whereabouts, 
and at last he gave up the search. Blood loill tell,” she 
went on, uplifting her regal head proudly, “ and it did so 
in Daisy Darrell’s case. Her father was a trifling, low- 
born man, whom my aunt eloped with and married when 
she was a very young girl, and, of course, her family cast 
her off. But when she died, my father took her daughter 
—who was, fortunately, her only child — and gave her a 
home, and tried to be a father to her ; but we soon found 
we couldn’t make a lady of her — the material was lacking. 
And the end of it was she eloped with some one who was, 
I suppose, one of her low associates before she came 
to Pinelands, and we’ve heard nothing from her since, and 
never want to again. ” 

Miss Fitzgerald dismissed the subject with a wave of her 
white hand. 

It was not a very warm night, and the air was cool as it 
blew against them, but there were great drops of perspira- 
tion beading Clifford Bancroft’s forehead; and the blood, 
as it coursed madly through his veins, seemed to be burn- 
ing with fever. 

A realization of the wretched predicament in which his 
mad act in marrying Daisy Darrell had placed him, had 
come to him. 

He had never had courage enough to break, on any pi e- 
text, the engagement existing between himself and Miss 
Fitzgerald. He had put off the evil moment from day to 
day, trusting that some providential help would come to 
him in the matter. But the last of July had come, and he 
was still pledged to marry Geraldine Fitzgerald in Sep- 
tember ! 

And he was already the husband of another woman! 

That conversation gave him an opening to tell the truth, 


DAISY DARRELL. 


51 


but after her contemptuous expressions touching Daisy 
Darrell and her abductor, he could not summon the reso- 
lution to do it. 

So, while he was in this miserable state of torture, the 
carriage halted before Mrs. Margaret Fitzgerald’s door, 
and the opportunity was lost. 

“ I will see you to-morrow,” Geraldine said, as her hand 
lingered in his at parting. 

“ Yes, to-morrow,” he answered; and as he walked hur- 
riedly down the street, he muttered: “To-morrow I will 
tell her.” 

As he went on down the street a crowd of people passed 
him; and he noticed in the midst four men bearing a litter, 
on which something, evidently a human form, was lying, 
covered with a coarse black pall. 

“ It is a dead body that they are taking to the Morgue,” 
he thought, and something prompted him to ask of one of 
the men: “ What have you there?” 

“ A drowned woman,” the man answered ; and the crowd 
passed on bearing that pitiful burden to the Morgue. 

Clifford Bancroft pursued his own way, which led him 
after awhile to the little vine-wreathed cottage. 

In the perplexity that was over him, he had not specu- 
lated on the possible cause of Daisy’s disappearance. Yet 
it was on account of the information Bridget Conner had 
given him. that he was at the cottage to which he had con- 
ducted her as a bride a few weeks before. He had no 
doubt but that he would find her in the house, and that 
she would give him her usual childish welcome, and he 
was disappointed when only Bridget appeared before him. 

“ Has Daisy returned ?” he asked. 

“ Not a shtep has her blessed foot put on this floor since 
last night,” Bridget responded, shaking her head vigor- 
ously. “ Ye know, av coorse, where she is, don’t ye ?” she 
added. 

He did not know, and he realized that fact with a terri- 
ble shock. 

It was midnight ! Where could she be ; she so young, 
and a stranger in the great city of New York, at midnight ? 

He sank down on a chair, with his tortured brain seem- 
ing to be whirling, and drew his hand tremulously across 
his forehead. 

He, began to question the Irishwoman as to the move- 
ments of her mistress on the evening of her disappearance ; 
and Bridget told him everything that had transpired so far 
as she knew of it. 

She told of the visit she and Daisy had made at the 
opera, and of her mistress’ sudden sickness, and departure 
from the place. She did not mention having noticed Clif- 


62 


DAISY DARRELL, 


ford Bancroft and Miss Fitzgerald because she had not no- 
ticed them. But he remenmered it as she talked, and a 
guilty consciousness of what had caused that sudden faint- 
ness of Daisy’s came to him. 

“ She was jealous of Geraldine,” he thought; “ and she 
ran aw^ay, she is such a reckless lit.tle thing.” 

That word “reckless,” as it came into his mind, sent a 
shock through him ; and at that instant the memory of 
the crowd he had met on the street, and of the awful 
thing covered with the black pall which they were bearing 
to the Morgue, rushed over him. 

The color went out of his face and the warmth from his 
heart. 

He arose from his chair and began pacing rapidly up 
and down the room; and Bridget stood with her arms 
akimbo and stared at him, until he seemed suddenly to 
become aware of her presence, and bade her sharply to 
leave him alone, that he would look Daisy up in the morn- 
ing. 

He did not believe that the still figure he had seen out- 
lined on that litter was Daisy’s; but it haunted him — pos- 
sibly because she had disappeared, and the stillness of 
death brooded over the house her bird -like voice had made 
so gay— and the form on that litter belonged to a dead 
woman. 

Through the dark hours that followed a feverish unrest 
possessed him, a bitter sense of guilt overburdened him. 

Very tenderly he thought of his child-wife; he forgot 
her hoidenish ways which had so shocked his refined 
taste. He remembered the fault he had found with her, 
the stern effort he had made to soften those childish ways, 
and he was sorry for it. He would be so glad to tell her 
so. He would search for her until he found her ; and when 
he did, he would take her home — home to his father’s 
house — and he would acknowledge her as his wife before 
the world. 

Not a thought of Geraldine Fitzgerald crossed his mind. 

In the gray of the early morning, he left the cottage and 

gtr - ^ " r . 



mode should he employ 


to find her ? Should he put a detective on the track ? 
Should he put an advertisement in the papers ? 

In this state of indecision, he halted in the street and 
glanced helplessly around. 

He had forgotten at last that awful burthen that had 
been borne past him last night, but it was recalled to his 
memory by a sight of the Morgue^ which was just beyond 
him. 


DAISY DAHEELL, 53 

“It is nonsense!” he muttered, “but I will put that mat- 
ter to rest, for I will see the drowned body.” 

He turned his steps toward the Morgue, and entered it. 

“ I wish to see the body of the drowned woman who was 
brought here last night,” he said to the attendant. 

“Itw^as found lodged between two boats,” the man an- 
swered, speaking in that cold, careless tone which associa- 
tion with misery is apt to engender. “And I doubt if her 
own mother could identify her.” 

He drew the pall from a body lying on the marble slab, 
and Clifford Bancroft sickened at the sight of the face, 
bruised beyond all recognition, and at the flaxen hair tan- 
gled with weeds. 

He only glanced toward it, and then he turned his head 
away, and took a step to retire. 

“You might learn what you want to know from her 
clothing,” the attendant said. “The shawl has a name 
marked on it.” 

He stooped over the body and spread the corner marked 
with the embroidered letters, out on his hand as he spoke. 

Clifford Bancroft read that name : 

“Daisy.” 

He glanced at tbe bruised face, *at the flaxen hair, and 
then he wavered back and forth as if he would fall, 
while wave after wave of darkness swept between him 
and that still thing which had been once a beautiful 
blonde girl. 

Even at that moment, in his dazed condition, the con- 
sciousness came to him that the marriage he had regret- 
ted so bitterly was broken — that he was free to marry 
Geraldine Fitzgerald when he pleased. 

But it was a conviction that seemed to suffocate liim, 
for he gasped for breath, and thick darkness gathered 
over him. He wavered to and fro, and then he fell in- 
sensible at the foot of the slab on which lay the dead 
body that he believed to be that of his injured young 
wife! 


CHAPTER XIV. 

“l WOULD PREFER PERDITION WITH YOU TO PARADISE WITH 
ANY ONE else!” 

Clifford Bancroft recovered consciousness almost im- 
mediately. It had been only a shock— a sudden and mo- 
mentary giving way of his nerves — which had caused him 
to fall blindly at the foot of the slab whereon lay that poor 
waif who had been drawn out of the water. 

In an instant the darkness had passed from him, and, he 
staggered to his feet. 


54 


DAISY DARRELL. 


“She is a friend of mine,” he said mutteringly to the 
staring attendant, making a motion of his hand toward 
the body which had once belonged to a young and beauti- 
ful woman, but never glancing toward it. ‘ ‘ I will attend 
to the interment.” 

Then he went out, and walked in an uncertain way down 
the street with the golden arrows of the rising sun falling 
on him and revealing the ghastly whiteness of his face. 

Not a gleam of color came into it any more for hours and 
hours afterward. He seemed to be utterly dazed, and he 
moved in the mechanical manner of a somnambulist. 

In this dazed state he made Iris way to the establishment 
of an undertaker, and arranged with him for the burial of 
the drowned woman that afternoon. 

Having done that, he went away to the little vine- 
wreathed cottage where he had been accustomed to see 
the bright face of his child-wife, with its blue eyes and 
roguish dimples uplifted to give him a welcoming kiss. 

He shivered as he contrasted that winning face with the 
one swollen and bruised beyond recognition, now lying on 
the slab at the Morgue. 

The noontide sun bathed the little cottage in a flood of 
gold, but how still and desolate it seemed with that bright 
young life gone out of it forever ! 

Bridget met him at the door. 

“Where is Miss Daisy?” she inquired eagerly. 

He lifted liis hand and motioned with it. 

“ She is there,” he said drearily. “There in the Morgue 
— dead— drowned !” 

The woman uttered a sharp cry and burst into a passion 
of tears, covering her face with her apron. 

He said nothing more to her, but passed on, shutting 
himself up in the small, daintily furnished room where he 
had spent so many hours with Daisy. 

When Bridget knocked on the door a few minutes after- 
ward to inquire, with floods of tears rolling over her plump 
cheeks, of the death of her beloved young mistress, he told 
her in a dull, dreary way, all he knew, or thought he 
knew, about her fate.. Then he informed her that her 
services would be required no longer there, for the cottage 
would be closed. 

He shut and locked the door again, and he came out of 
the room no more until the hour he had arranged for the 
burial of the drowned woman had arrived. 

Mechanically he made his way to the Morgue. The 
handsome coffin he had ordered was being placed in the 
hearse when he arrived. He turned his eyes away from it 
with a shiver, and entered tlie close carriage which was 
waiting for him, and was driven slowly to the cemetery. 


DAISY DARRELL. 


55 


He stood as the only mourner at the grave and saw the 
coffin lowered into the earth. 

“ Dust to dust. Ashes to ashes.” 

With those words, so solemnly proclaiming the frailty of 
our mortal covering, echoing drearily in his ears, he turned 
away from the little grave and was driven back to the city. 

There was a great void in his heart, and life seemed to 
be but a mockery— a thing scarce worth a struggle to main- 
tain— yet it was his, and he must go on through it as best 
he could. 

His mind had been wholly occupied by Daisy, but the 
sonorous tones of a city clock sounding from a steeple 
above him as he passed along the street brought to him 
a swift reminder of Geraldine Fitzgerald. 

As he mechanically counted the strokes, he recollected 
that he had made an engagement with her the evening 
before, to visit her at that hour. 

In his apathetic state there was no resistance, and no 
desire of resistance, in him. He was like a leaf which 
obeys the will of the wind. 

So, reminded by the clock of that engagement, he turned 
his steps in the direction of Mrs. Margaret Fitzgerald's. 

When he was ushered into the parlor, he found Geral- 
dine awaiting him with a shadow on her beairtiful face, 
which instantly cleared away at his appearance. 

“ You are more than half an hour late,” she said, looking 
reproachfully up into his face. 

She noticed then Hiat he was very pale, and that his 
black eyes were dull and heavy. 

“You are not well,” she exclamed anxiously, with her 
white hand stealing into liis. 

He tossed his curling hair back from his forehead in a 
listless way, and drew his fingers tremblingly through it. 

No; I am not quite well,” he said, and his usually rich 
voice was so hollow that it startled her. 

. She drew him down to a seat beside herself on a sofa. 

“ You have scarcely seemed like yourself, Clifford, for 
weeks,” she said tenderly. “I have been anxious about 
you. Ah, I love you so, that whatever troubles you must 
trouble me, too.” 

He looked down into her face with a hint of pity strug- 
gling through the dullness of his eyes. 

“ I am not worthy of any woman’s love,” he said, drear- 
ily. “ I am not worth a single pang that love would cost. 
Better it would be for any woman that she should die, 
than that she should trust her heart and her happiness to 
me!” 

What a world of self-reproach ! What a strong hint of 
warning there was in his voice hen he said that; but it 


56 


DAISY DARRELL. 


only seemed to melt her into greater tenderness for him. 
Her white arm stole softly around his neck, and her beau- 
tiful head drooped low on his shoulder. 

There was such a clinging to him ; such an abandonment 
of her entire life to him in the motion, that it required not 
the assertion of her lips to convince him of her love for 
him, and her trust in him. 

“I would prefer perdition with you, to paradise with any 
one else,” she said. 

At that instant he remembered so vividly the other arms 
that had clung to him; the little flaxen head that had 
rested on his shoulder ; the bird-like voice that had uttered 
vows of love and trust to him, that he seemed to himself 
treacherous to her memory in listening to the protestations 
of this rival whose charms he believed had driven that 
child-wife of his to suicide; and he drew Geraldine’s arms 
from his neck, feeling as if their embrace were suffocating 
him. 

He remembered, with a miserable sense of his own weak- 
ness, that all the time he had been tlie husband of one 
woman^ he was the plighted lover of another, and that he 
had, with despicable cowardice, deferred from day to day 
to declare to Geraldine that an obstacle had come between 
him and her, and that he could not fulfill his promise to 
marry her. It was the goading consciousness of that im- 
perative duty which had drawn a cloud between himself 
and Daisy. 

He believed that the necessity for making that embar- 
rassing confession was no longer with him, that he was 
legally free to marry Geraldine^ but the idea was horrible 
to him. 

An impulse came over him to deal fairly and candidly 
by her, to tell her that he did not love her, that he could 
not marry her. But again his cowardice came over him ; 
he shut his lips without uttering the confession. 

“What does it matter?” he muttered to himself, as he. 
went away from the house with the darkness falling over ' 
him. “What does it matter what becomes of me, now 
that Daisy is dead and gone? Geraldine loves me, why 
should I not marry her? It would be a sort of retribution 
to Daisy, I think, to bind my life to a woman whom I know 
I do not love.” 

It never occurred to him to look beyond that sacrifice at 
the altar to the long t!rain of events that might follow 
it. He thought nothing of the lifelong companionship with 
that woman whom he did not love. He thought not of the 
mask it would force him to wear, and of the hourly dan- 
ger there would be of dropping that mask, and of the ter- 
rible discord that would come from it. 


Daisy darrell. 


57 


He only remembered that “ Daisy was dead and gone;’’ 
he only thought that it “ did not matter what became of 
him.” 

So in a reckless mood he awaited the day when the 
sacrifice should be made, when he should bind his life, 
through the marriage vow, to Geraldine Fitzgerald. 


CHAPTER XV. 

“if there is any reason why an honest man should 

NOT TAKE YOU AS HIS WIPE!” 

Three weeks had passed since John Goldman had lifted 
Daisy from the roadside, and had borne her to his mother's 
house; and three weeks, lacking two days, had passed 
since the form of the drowned woman had been laid in its 
last resting-place in the quiet cemetery. 

Poor wreck of womanhood! Who she had been, or 
what she had been, it matters not here; her very name 
had perished from the earth. 

For two weeks a slender shaft of marble, infinitely 
whiter, mayhap, than her life had been, had gleamed over 
her grave, erected by Clifford Bancroft. 

It bore no inscription save the simple word' cut in a 
wreath of carved snow-drops : 

“Daisy.” 

For three weeks the death angel had hovered over the 
home of the Widow Goldman, threatening, from hour to 
hour, to cut tlie thread of Daisy Bancroft’s life ; but, mer- 
cifully or unmercifully, as time was destined to prove, the 
shears refused to sever the frail cord. 

Little by little Daisy came back to consciousness. 

In her delirium she had prattled of her childhood al- 
ways, but strangely enough she did not mention Pine- 
lands, nor any member of the family there. 

And never pnce did the name of Clifford Bancroft fall 
from her lips. 

During that time of helplessness Mrs. Goldman was the 
most attentive of nurses. Not a day passed in which, in a 
brusque way, she had not uttered some invective against 
her son for “ picking up sick women on the highway and 
thrusting them on her to nurse,” but John understood her, 
and he would smile in her wrinkled face, and say : 

“I didn’t dare to do anything else, mother. You 
wouldn’t have owned me as your son if I had not brought 
the poor, pretty little thing here.” 

“The mischief I wouldn’t!” the old lady responded 
gruffly. “I nurse her because I want her to get well 
enough to go back to her mother, if she has one.” 


58 


DAISY DARRELL. 


Her voice softened as she said that, and she smoothed 
the pillow on which the flaxen head rested with a mother’s 
tender touch. 

John Goldman looked wistfully into the pale face lying 
there for a minute, and then he turned his mild gray eyes 
on his mother. 

“She may not have any mother or any home of her 
own, and if she hasn’t I believe you would be willing for 
me to share mine with her.” 

He twined his arm around his mother’s waist and drew 
her close to him as he said that. 

A look of indecision for an instant came into the old 
lady’s bright and still comely face, and then she drew her- 
self with a jerk from her son’s encircling arm. 

“I don’t want to hear any foolishness about this girl, 
John Goldman,” she said menacingly. “As a fellow-being 
in trouble, I am willing to take care of her as long as she 
needs care, but no longer. As soon as she is able to budge 
out of this house, I mean for her to go. What do you 
know about her ? She may be, for aught you know to the 
contrary, the vilest little wretch in New York. So don’t 
let me hear any nonsense from you about her !” 

It was one of the few occasions when her unkind words 
were thoroughly earnest words, and John knew it, and 
held his peace, but for all that the settled conviction which 
had come to him in regard to their beautiful invalid was 
not shaken. 

That conviction was that she was pure and good, and 
that she had come to be necessary to his happiness. 

From the moment he had seen her lying like a broken 
lily on the roadside, and had lifted her in his strong arms, 
he had loved her. 

“If she will stay, I will not let her go,” he said to him- 
self as he walked out toward the stables a few minutes 
afterward in the mellow glow ,of the September sunset. 
“ As soon as she is well enough she will explain everything 
to mother, and mother— bless her kind old lieart, will be 
reconciled.” 

With a warm thrill at his heart John told himself this; 
never once suspecting how impassable was the barrier 
which lay between himself and the young stranger on 
whose purity he would have staked his*^ life. 

His words to his mother that evening had thrown a flood 
of light into his mother’s mind, and she was startled by the 
discovery that her great-hearted, unromantic boy had fallen 
in love with the b^eautiful waif an untimely fortune had 
thrown under her roof, 

“She is young, and she has a strong constitution, and 
she will soon rally,” the old lady muttered to herself. 


DAISY DARRELL. 


“and just as soon as she is well enough to leave, I will 
send her away, the troublesome young baggage !” 

In the stillness and loneliness of that same night, Daisy 
awoke to consciousness — to a full and bitter memory of the 
incidents which had led to her flight from the vine- 
wreathed cottage, and from the protection of the husband 
who had shown himself so tired of her, so treacherous to 
her. 

Where she was she did not know — but the room was not 
unfamiliar to her as she stared at its appointments in the 
dim light of the night-lamp. Consciousness had returned 
so slowly to her, like the gradual brightening of the dawn, 
that she had, in an unthinking way, become accustomed to 
her surroundings by the time that bitter wave of memory 
swept over her. 

She stirred uneasily, and a sobbing moan broke from 
her. 

In an instant, Mrs. Goldman, who was sleeping on a 
lounge beside the bed, was awake, and was bending over 
her. 

“ Do you want anything?” she asked. 

Daisy gazed wustfully up at her. 

That face, with its classical features and bright black 
eyes, did not seem new to her— she had become accustomed 
to it, as she had to the room. 

She reached up her trembling hand and placed it on the 
old lady’s shoulder. 

“You liave been kinjd to me,” she said in a weak, broken 
voice. “But who are you, and how did I come here?” 

“ My son found you fainting on the roadside and brought 
you here three weeks ago. Now don’t talk any more, but 
go to sleep,” Mrs. Goldman responded peremptorily but not 
unkindly. 

Daisy was too weak to contend, even if she had been in- 
clined to do so, so she closed her eyes wearily, and in a 
few minutes dozed off again. 

John brought her delicate breakfast to her the next 
morning, with his honest face aglow with delight at the 
report his mother had given him of their patient’s improved 
condition. 

Daisy looked at him as he placed the waiter on a table 
beside the bed, and a rush of tears— the first she had shed 
since that terrible revelation at the opera— came into her 
blue eyes. 

She lifted her arms and extended both her hands to him, 
crying out brokenly, like a wounded child : 

“ I am so glad you have come. I know you ; you have 
been with me all the time. You are my friend, aren’t 
you?” 


60 


DAISY DARUELL. 


John Goldman clasped the pleading little hands in his, 
and said soothingly, while a mist gathered in his own eyes: 

“Yes, I am your friend. I will be your friend as long 
as I live. I will never forsake you— never !” 

He was startled at the effect his words had on her, for 
she burst into a passion of tears, crying out vehemently: 

“ Yes, you will forsake me ! ife'forsook me, and I trusted 
him so !” 

Poor John was terrified, and being overcome, as most 
good men are, at the sight of a woman’s tears, he was con' 
strained to do the wisest thing possible under the circum- 
stances — he remained silent, holding her fluttering little 
hands in his until her paroxysm of grief had subsided. 

Then he urged her to eat, and had the satisfaction of 
seeing her partake of a few mouthfuls. 

After that her recovery was gradual, and it was two 
weeks before she was able to sit up and to walk about the 
house. 

During those weeks Mrs. Goldman gave vent to her cu- 
riosity, and questioned her closely about herself. 

“Please don’t ask me to tell you how I happen to be so 
friendless,” Daisy said pleadingly. “ My name is Daisy; 
call me that, it is the one my mother gave me, and the 
only one I claim. I am alone in the world. I haven’t a 
friend.” 

John Goldman, standing outside the window, heard that 
pathetic assertion, and he shook his head and muttered : 

“ You have got one friend, at least, and you’ll never have 
less while John Goldman lives.” 

That night he had a long conversation with his mother, 
and what he told her angered and troubled the old lady 
more than anything he had ever said in his whole life be- 
fore had done. 

It was, that he loved Daisy, and be she Avho or what she 
was, he would marry her if she would have him. 

He was gentle but firm in his maintenance of that resolve 
— and his mother found herself unable to shake it. 

“ I will speak very plainly to the young baggage,” the 
old lady muttered angrily, when John had gone to his own 
room leaving her alone in hers. 

It was not late — and with the burden on her mind she 
could not sleep — so she went to the little chamber where 
Daisy was lying wakeful and restless on her bed. 

“ I have come to tell you something,” Mrs. Goldman said 
in her blunt way, seating herself on the side of the bed. 
“ My son has fallen headlong in love with you, and says 
he intends to marry you— and as I don’t know anything 
about you, and you won’t tell anything about yourself, I 
come to beg you as a mother, and as a friend who was kind 


DAISY DARRELL, 


61 


to you in a time of need — not to repay that kindness by im* 
posing on the weakness of my son. If you have not been 
what you ought to have been — if there is any reason why 
an honest man should not take you as his wife, I come to 
ask you that you will go away and not let John know 
where you are gone— for I believe he is so much infatuated 
with you that h'e would follow you to perdition.” 

Daisy’s eyes were wide with horror. 

She remembered that she was a wedded wife — that, 
under the circumstances, John Goldman’s pure love was a 
thing unholy for her. 

_‘‘Oh, no, no; he must not think of such a thing!” she 
cried, shrinking and trembling. “ I will go away some- 
where — I don’t know where.” 

It never occurred to Mrs. Goldman that she would put 
her resolve into execution that night, and she was con- 
science-stricken and remorseful the next morning when 
she discovered that, in her still enfeebled bodily condition, 
Daisy had stolen away in the darkness, leaving no clew as 
to the direction in which she had departed. 

“God help the poor child!” Mrs. Goldman muttered; 
“ she will die by the wayside !” 


CHAPTER XVI. 

“l WILL GO BACK TO CLIFFORD!” 

When Mrs. Goldman left Daisy’s room that night, after 
having made that appeal to her, it was nearly midnight. 

For a long time Daisy lay, with her arm thrown over her 
eyes, thinking. 

The revelation made by Mrs. Goldman of the state of her 
son’s heart had been a surprise, a shock to her, for she had 
never suspected it. But as she lay there, unconsciously 
reviewing the days she had passed under the same roof with 
John Goldman, she wondered at her own blindness. She 
knew now that his great heart had shone in his eyes 
whenever he had bent them upon her. 

“ It is because I think so much of Clifford that I have no 
room in my mind for any one else,” she muttered. 

Then she forgot John Goldman, and began to think with 
absorbing intensity of Clifford Bancroft. She went over 
in memory every hour of her acquaintance with him. She 
recalled to mind every tender word, every soft glance he 
had bestowed upon her. 

Her heart thrilled and melted with the power of those 
dear, remembered days until, for the time, every drop of 
bitterness toward him was gone. 

She pictured him now— and oh, how sweet it was to 


62 


DAISY DARRELL. 


dream so— as being true to her, as being bowed with grief 
at her loss, as searching for her far and wide. 

For the first time since she had left the little vine- 
wreathed cottage, she reproached herself for having done 
so. 

She began to make excuses for him ; she began to com- 
fort herself, and to strengthen her faith in him by feeding 
her mind on pleasant possibilities. 

“Our marriage was secret, no one knew of it, so he 
could not well have avoided paying some attention to Ger- 
aldine, he knew her so well, and, of course, she expected 
it from him. Then the report of their going to be married 
was nothing but gossip. I was a little fool to pay any at- 
tention to it. And, in consequence of a piece of sheer non- 
sense, I have almost killed myself, and brought a world 
of trouble on Clifford.” 

Clifford was not the only one she had brought trouble 
on, and she remembered it at that instant with an addi- 
tional pang of self-reproach. 

She knew that she had brought the sorrow of a hopeless 
love on great-hearted John Goldman. 

“ He will get over it, and forget me when I am gone,” 
she said to herself. “I will go away, and he shall lose all 
trace of me— all reminder of me. I will go back to Clifford, 
and tell him how sorry I am for having believed what the 
man said at the opera about his going to marry Geraldine, 
and for running away in consequence, and giving him all 
the trouble I have.” 

She had arisen, and was making her toilet with trem- 
bling, eager hands, and her whole being was thrilled with 
an ecstasy of renewed hope and faith brought on by the 
sudden revulsion of sentiment toward her husband. 

She donned the pretty shawl and hat which had been 
among the useful articles Mrs. Goldman had furnished in 
the wardrobe, which, in the kindness of her heart, she had 
bestowed on the poverty-stricken girl ; and then she went 
to the window and drew back the curtains, and looked out 
on the night. 

The stars were disappearing from the sky, and were 
dim, like eyes filmy with sleep, and the trees in the yard 
stood in the faint light like indistinct shadows; and over 
everything the gloom was momentarily deepening. 

But the prospect did not dismay Daisy ; it did not deter 
her even for an instant from climbing through the window 
and speeding away as fast as her small feet would carry 
her. 

She took the road which she knew led to the great city. 
It was the goal of her journey, and she looked forward to 
entering it with the wildest delight. 


DAISY DARRELL. 


63 


She was of such a highly emotional nature that her sud- 
denly recovered faith in her husband was as strong as her 
distrust of him had been before. 

An idea was with her that she would find him in the 
little vine-wreathed cottage waiting and watching for her 
to come back to him, and she longed for win^s that she 
might fiy over the space separating her from him. 

She went on ^nd on; the stars, one by one, dropped 
asleep on the sky, and the gloom of the rayless hour pre- 
ceding the dawn fell over her. 

The wind blew against her, cold and damp and dis- 
couraging, but no ominous feature of nature could at that 
moment dim the luster of her hope, the brightness of her 
anticipations. 

Like a swiftly moving shadow among shadows, she made 
her way steadily forward, and after awhile a hint of gray 
came into the darkness through which she wandered— there 
was a little thrill, a little flutter in the silence, as if the 
world stirred in its sleep ; and the gray grew grayer, and 
an early bird suddenly began to sing in a tree under which 
Daisy was passing, and seemed to wake Nature with a 
flood of joyous melody. 

On and on — eager and light of heart, with glad antici- 
pations, Daisy went, feeling no sense of fatigue— keeping 
no count of the miles over which her little feet passed. 

The gray of the day took a hint of crimson. Nature was 
blushing at the coming of her radiant god — the sun; and 
the pure, crisp morniiTg air was tainted with the foul 
breath of the great city, through the suburbs of which 
Daisy was now moving rapidly. 

In the excitement that was over her, her feet seemed 
scarcely to touch the ground, for she was drawing every 
moment nearer and nearer to the little vine-wreathea 
cottage. 

She came in sight of it at last and she uttered a glad 
cry as its gables and chimneys were uplifted in the distance 
before her in the morning sunlight. 

She quickened her steps so that she ran over the space 
intervening between her and it. 

With eager hands she pulled open the little gate and ran 
up the gravel walk to the door. 

She turned the knob, but the door was locked, and she 
tremulously sounded a loud peal on the bell. 

A moment after the door was opened by some one who 
was passing through the hall— but it was not Clifford— it 
was not even Bridget, and a sickening sensation of disap- 
pointment swept through poor Daisy as she looked into 
the face of this strange woman, 


64 


DAI8Y DARRELL. 


“ I want to see Mr. Bancroft— Mr. Clifford Bancroft,” 
slie said, clutching her hands together. 

The woman had a hard, shrewish face, and a hard, 
shrewish voice. 

“ Tliere is no one of that name living here,” she said. 

“But he did live here— he and Bridget Conner, too,” 
Daisy said, pleadingly. ‘ ‘ Can’t you tell me where they have 
gone.” 

“No, I cannot!” the woman said, curtly. “I never 
heard of either of them before.” 

She shut the door as she spoke, and Daisy leaned faint 
and trembling against it. All her strength was gone, and 
in the bitterness of her disappointment she felt as if she 
would die. 

She sank down on the step and waited for a minute or 
two to recover her self-possession. 

She was only terribly disappointed in not finding Clif- 
ford there to welcome her, as the father did the returned 
prodigal of old, but her renewed faith in him was not de- 
stroyed. 

She would look for him in the city, she thought, and she 
arose and went away down the gravel walk again. But 
how heavy now seemed her feet, which had been so light 
when she bounded over that same way only a few minutes 
before ; she could scarcely drag them along. 

And how weary she was ; it seemed to her that she must 
sink with exhaustion at every step. She would stop and 
rest somewhere, if she could only find some quiet, retired 
place. 

She halted and looked around. She was in front of a 
church, and the doors and windows were open, as if it were 
being aired. 

“ I will see if I can’t rest in there,” she thought, and she 
stole in, her small feet falling noiselessly on the rich, thick 
carpet. 

There was only one person in the church, and he did not 
notice her. He was busily engaged in adorning the altar 
with devices made of cut flowers. 

Daisy shrunk into a corner behind the door and lay 
down. 

“ There is to be a wedding she thought, listlessly notic- 
ing a monogram of tuberoses over the altar. The letters 
were B. F. • 

Oh, how tired, how weak she was 1 She could not keep 
her eyes open. The man and the flowers as she stared at 
them seemed to be skipping about from place to place— 
sometimes disappearing, and then popping into sight again. 
But after a few minutes they disappeared for good, and 
she was asleep. 


DAISY DARRELL. 65 

She dreamed of Clifford, and he seemed to be playing on 
some fine, sweet musical instrument for her an air theJi 
thrilled her with its melody. 

She woke with a start as the music ceased. 

Where was she? For a moment she could not collect her 
thoughts, and in her hidden corner she stared at the 
crowd of elegantly dressed people who had come into the 
edifice since she had fallen asleep there behind the door. 

Ah, she remembered now; she had dropped into the 
church to rest, and a man was adorning it for a wedding. 

The marriage was taking place at this very moment. 

“ If any one knows why these two should not be joined 
together let him now speak or forever after hold his 
peace.”' 

Those words, or words to that effect, she heard, and in 
the brief pause thie clergyman made after uttering them, 
she glanced at the two to whom those words referred— the 
two who were being joined together in the holy bonds of 
wedlock. 

As she did so, she seemed to be turned into stone. 

In those two she recognized Geraldine Fitzgerald and 
Clifford Bancroft ! 


CHAPTER XVII. 

“l WILL LIVE FOR VENGEANCE!” 

Seeing who the high contracting parties taking that 
solemn vow at the altar were, Daisy tried to rise to her 
feet, to utter a loud protest against the foul wrong that 
was being perpetrated against her and against that other 
woman. But the sudden shock had paralyzed her limbs 
and had deadened her voice, so that the words she would 
have uttered died in a low, hoarse gurgle in her throat. 

In the shadow of the obscure corner in which she was 
hidden, but which commanded a plain view of the altar, 
she remained in the position to which she had sprung, and 
which was a kneeling one, and stared, wide-eyed and dumb, 
at the couple whom in a minute’s time she heard the 
clergyman pronounce “ man and wife.” 

“Whom God hath joined together, let no man put 
asunder !” 

As those words of solemn import came to her, she drew 
a long, shivering breath, and whispered, but in a voice as 
low as the hum of a butterfly’s wings : 

“Not God! not God!” 

When they came down the flower-scented aisle, with the 
bride blushing but radiant, and the bridegroom strangely 
pale and stern-looking, an insane impulse came over her to 
rush to them and tear them apart, proclaiming him her 


66 


DAISY DAUnDLL, 


own lawfully wedded husband ; but still that temporary 
paralysis held her limbs and deadened her voice. So, all 
unsuspicious of the presence of that terrible witness, they 
.passed slowly down the aisle to the strains of the Wedding 
iMarch, and disappeared from her sight through the open 
doorway. 

The crowd followed in their wake, and in a few minutes 
she only remained in the shadow of the flower -wreathed, 
flower-scented church, where the gilded cross at the altar, 
gleaming in spots as the light fell on it, stared at her, and 
the gilded inscription proclaimed to her, “Thou shalt not 
glory save in the cross.” 

The sexton came in to close the church, and seeing her 
there kneeling behind the door, and staring forlornly, he 
grasped her shoulder and shook her, saying gruffly : 

“ Get out of here ! What are you doing here ?” 

As if his rough touch had set her stagnant blood into 
motion and had relaxed her strained muscles, she arose 
staggeringly to her feet, and went out of the church where 
such a terrible revelation had come to her, and passed 
slowly down the street. , 

Her thinking faculties, however, seemed still to remain 
paralyzed. Her mind was incapable of receiving any idea. 
She was fllled only with the picture of that marriage scene, 
the very slightest feature of which seemed to be seared as 
it were with a red-hot iron on her memory. 

She met and passed people by on the street as if they 
were shadows. They were nothing to her — in all the 
universe of God there was nothing to interest her now ex- 
cept that marriage rite in the flower-wreathed, flower- 
scented church. 

How long she walked she did not know — she did not 
know, either, that she was in need of food, for she had 
eaten nothing since the night before— but a sudden faint- 
ness came over her — she grew blind ; she reeled, and would 
have fallen but that a strong arm was thrown around her, 
and her head rested on a broad breast until the momentary 
darkness passed away. 

“Are you ill?” 

The question was asked in a strong, anxious voice, and 
Daisy tried to answer it, but she could not ; it seemed to 
her that she should never be able to speak again . 

She looked helplessly up into the face of the man, and 
as she' did so, she instinctively tried to withdraw herself 
from his arms, but she was not strong enough to stand un- 
supported. 

His face was repulsive to her, and yet it was not an un- 
kind face ; it was only a dissipated, reckless-looking one. 

“ Let me take you into my house here; you are just in 


DAmY VAHRELL, 


67 


front of it,” he said, “and I will give you a glass of wine. 
It will refresh you.” 

He threw his arms around her, and lifted her as if she 
had been a very light child . and so bore her into the house 
before which they had been standing, placed her on a sofa, 
and then went for a glass of wine which he brought from 
a neighboring sideboard. ' 

“Drink this,” he said commandingly, but very kindl}^ 
and she mechanically obeyed him. 

Then, without taking any further notice of him or his 
surroundings, she lay back on the sofa and closed her eyes 
as if she were going to sleep. 

But she was not, she was only going to think. 

The wine, with its invigorating influence, had broken the 
lethargic spell which was over her. 

In the course of that day her whole nature had under- 
gone a revolution. 

She was no longer a loving, guileless child. She was a 
woman, wronged, insulted, and direfully revengeful ! 

Yes, she would be revenged upon Clifford Bancroft. If 
life was spared her, he should suffer pang for pang what 
he had made her suffer. 

“ Henceforth,” she said, “ I will live for vengeance, and 
vengeance only !” 

There was no one in the room with her, but in the ad- 
joining apartment there seemed to be quite a party— and a 
very noisy party, too ; for boisterous laughter came from 
the lips of both men and women, and loud words not im- 
mixed with oaths— and they, too, -were often in the silvery 
accents of a woman’s-voice. Through all came the chnk 
of glasses, and the popping of corks drawn from bottles. 

Daisy heard all this unthinkingly, uncaringly. 

What was it to her what any one should do, saving only 
Clifford Bancroft, and Geraldine Fitzgerald, whom she had 
heard the robed clergyman pronounce his wife. 

After awhile some one opened the door of communication 
between the room she occupied and that other noisy apart- 
ment, and entered and closed and locked it after him again, 
and came up and seated himself on the sofa beside her. 

He had been drinking, for the fume of wine was on his 
breath, and its sparkle in his eyes as he turned his face 
upon her. 

He reached out and took her hand, but she drew it from 
him, with the delicacy of her nature asserting itself so plainly 
in the movement that he could not but notice it, but he 
was too much intoxicated to heed it. 

“ Don’t shrink from me, sweetheart,” he said with tender 
reproach. “This place is Devenant’s Dance House, and 
I am Devenant. There are a score of other young ladies 


68 DAISY DARRELL. 

here, but none of them interest me. I am going to keep 
you for my queen.” 

He bent over as if to kiss her, but she sprung to her 
feet. 

“Show me the way out of this house I” she cried out, her 
eyes and cheeks glowing with righteous wrath. “You are 
a coward to insult a girl as weak and friendless and poor 
as I am !” 

Her face quivered and she broke into a passion of tears, 
hiding her eyes on her arm, and sobbing convulsively. 

Dan Devenant had been all his life wild and reckless, but 
he was not wholly bad at heart; there w'cre generous im- 
pulses in his nature which vibrated strongly when they 
were skillfully touched. 

They were touched now by Daisy’s words and tears. 
Like all men of his class he respected a pure woman 
beyond everything else on earth, and the sight of this 
beautiful, helpless girl, trembling and weeping there before 
him, sobered him. 

He drew back a step further from her. 

“ I beg your pardon,” he said, humbly. “ I was a little 
in wine, or I would not have spoken so. Of course, you 
may go away, for this is no place for such as you, but let 
me give you something to eat first. I will bring it to you 
here myself, and you need not be afraid that you will meet 
with any further rudeness under this roof.” 

With the intuition natural to women and children where 
human nature is concerned, Daisy felt that she could 
indeed trust him. So she thanked him, and dried her eyes, 
and sank back on the sofa and waited for the meal which 
she knew she so much needed. 

There came suddenly over her a memory of her helpless- 
ness, of her destitution. 

While she waited and worked for the vengeance she was 
determined to accomplish, she must live— and in order to 
live she must have food, and in order to have food she 
must work. 

But what could she do and who would employ her ? 

These convictions, like lightning flashes, had swept 
through her mind. 

There was a morning paper lying on the marble slab of a 
table within reach of her hand. 

It suggested an idea to her. 

She would look over the column of “ Wants.” Perhaps 
there was advertised a situation that she could fill. 

Her eyes ran down the list, and were attracted by this: 

“ Companion wanted. Apply at 247 Gray Street.” 

Why she selected that particular one from a number of 


DAISY DARRELL, 


others she did not know ; perhaps she was guided by that 
peculiar destiny which is said to preside over the lives of 
men. 

Certain it is, that after she had eaten the delightful re- 
past Dan Devenant served for her with his own hands, and 
had thanked him for it, she asked him to direct her to 
Gray Street: and when he had done so, she bade him good- 
bye, and set out in the way he had indicated, resolved to 
offer herself as companion to somebody — she had no idea 
and no care who it might be— “ at No. 247.” 


CHAPTER XVIII. 

“ ‘no. 247 GRAY street!’ ” 

_ It was a long, long journey, or so it seemed to Daisy’s 
tired feet, and she had no money to hire a conveyance. 
So she Avalked on, inquiring her way from square to square. 

She turned into Gray Street at last, and she set herself 
to find No. 247. 

She had taken no note of time ; but many hours, which 
seemed to her like an eternity almost, had passed since she 
had looked on that unholy marriage-rite which bound her 
own husband to another woman. 

She thought of that scene all the time ; even when she 
was mechanically reading the numbers of the houses she 
passed she thought of it. 

“245”— “247.” 

She had found it at last — No. 247 — and she halted and 
stared at it in the glow of the dying day, for the gold of 
the sunset was fading into the gray of the twilight. 

What a gloomy-looking old place it was — this number 
247 1 It was an ancient landmark, and it seemed queerly 
out of place among its fashionable neighbors, whose modern 
architecture made the quaint, weather-beaten, time-stained 
house appear lonely and desolate, like something which had 
outlived its generation. 

It was very large and built of brick ; and it had been 
painted a vivid green a great many years ago, but it was 
almost black now, and the mold clung to its base, and the 
cobwebs drooped from its eaves. The windows were high 
and small, and the doors were narrow and shrunken. 

Daisy was too thoroughly miserable to be depressed by 
any exterior influences of time or place, or the somberness 
of 247 would have struck upon her. 

As it was she pulled open the heavy gate and passed up 
the gravel-walk, which was bordered on either side by a 
thorny hedge, and sounded a decided summons on the old- 
fashioned brass knocker. 

The door was opened after a minute by a young woman 


70 


DAISY BARBELL, 


who would have been exceedingly beautiful but for the 
vacant expression of her richly-tinted face. More properly 
speaking, perhaps, her expression of countenance was less 
vacant than it was bewildered. 

“ I have called because of an advertisement I saw in the 
paper,” Daisy said, feeling no interest in the young woman, 
nor in her beauty. “An advertisement for a companion 
wanted at this house — No. 247 G-ray Street.” 

The woman’s dark. Oriental eyes stared perplexedly, and 
a pucker came between her slender, arched brows. 

She said nothing, and Daisy, after waiting for a full 
minute, repeated the question impatiently, putting it in 
more explicit words : 

“ I wish to see the person who advertised for a com- 
panion at this house. Can I see her?” 

“ Her?” the woman ejaculated, and then added in broken 
sentences, stopping to catch her breath between the words: 
“ There ain’t nobody living here but jest only Dr. Burnie. 
The lady and gentleman who are going to live here haven’t 
come yet, and won’t be here for two weeks.” 

The woman was stupid, and Daisy stepped into the door- 
way and said irritably : 

“ Ask Dr. Burnie if he will see me — I may be able to find 
out from him what I want to know.” 

The woman turned sluggishly, leaving her standingthere 
in the doorway, while she went down tbe long hall, and 
after knocking on a door at the furthest end, disappeared 
through it. ' 

A few minutes afterward she reappeared, and going to 
the front door where Daisy was still standing, bade her 
follow to Dr. Burnie’s room. So, one leading and the other 
following, they passed down the long, old-fashioned hall, 
with its frescoed walls speaking of the taste of a bygone 
age, and entered a large room at its end. 

The curtains were drawn over the windowSj thereby 
intensifying in the apartment the effects of the twilight 
which was gathering outside. It was a handsomely fur- 
nished room, but it was unmistakably the domicile of a 
gentleman, for the odor of fine tobacco pervaded it strongly. 
There were a great number of books scattered about on 
elegantly carved shelves, and marble-topped tables. 

On a ' sofa lounge near the old-fashioned fireplace, a 
gentleman was lying, pufiSng soft clouds of smoke from a 
pipe of some queer, Oriental make. 

He was an old man, short and square and bald ; and his 
eyes, which were dark and rather prominent, were round 
and staring, like one who strives to look through darkness. 
As Daisy entered he extended his small hand in greeting 


DAIsr paurell, 71 

to her, but with that inaccuracy of direction peculiar to 
the blind. 

She went forward and placed her own in it, and his fin^ 
gers closed around hers with a soft, lingering pressure. 

“ Your hand indicates to me that you are ’young,” he 
said with a smile, and in a low, measured voice, “But 
my eyes don’t assist me in my judgment, for I am blind. 
Lucretia; ar% you there, Lucretia?” 

Still retaining Daisy’s hand in his gentle clasp, he put 
the question, and the bewildered-looking young woman 
who had halted at the door made answer: 

“Yes, sir, I’m here.” 

“ Then bring a chair for the lady, and place it here be- 
fore me,” he said, and as the young woman did so, he 
released Daisy’s hand, who immediately took possession 
of the proffered seat. 

Dr. Burnie leaned his head against the back of the sofa 
on which he was sitting, and closed his eyes, and said : 

^ “Lucretia tells me that you came in answer to my adver- 
tisement for a companion.” 

“ Yes, sir,” Daisy answered. “I saw it in the paper, and 
came to see about it, as I must do something ; but I had 
expected to see a lady here.” 

He smiled, and shook his head in a mournful way. 

“A lady would not be such a helpless person as a blind 
man is,” he said. “Men, with all their boasted wisdom, 
have fewer mental resources for self-entertainment, I think, 
than women. Women have ingenuity enough to employ 
themselves pleasantly>4n some way, even if the elysium of 
vision is denied them. But a man is helpless under these 
circumstances, and must have somebody to see for him, or 
he would go melancholy mad.” 

Daisy said nothing- -his affliction did not touch her; his 
words made no impression on her. She was too thoroughly 
absorbed in herself, and in her own towering adversities, 
to give a sentimental thought to the calamities of another. 

“I have had a great many applications for the place,” 
Dr. Burnie went on, smiling and toying with the stem of 
his now extinguished pipe, “ but none of them came up to 
my requirements in a companion. First of all, I want a 
good reader.” 

He extended his hand to a table near by, and picked up 
the first book he chanced to touch, and offered it to her. 

“ I don’t know what volume this is,” he said, “ but read 
to me from it: anything you please.” 

It was the poems of Lord Byron, and Daisy opened it at 
random and began to read. 

The poem chanced to be that passionate appeal, begin- 
ning; 


DAISY DARRELL. 


•72 

“ Fare thee well.” 

She read it with the memory of Clifford Bancroft’s bro- 
ken faith and desertion strong upon her, forgetting Dr. 
Burnie, forgetting everything else as she read, and when 
she ended, and her trembling voice throbbed into silence, 
the old man drew a long breath. 

“Well done !” he said. “ Your voice is clear and sweet ; 
your articulation pure, and you seem to enter with thor- 
ough zest into the feeling of the poet. I have heard no 
reading so pleasing to me in the three years of my blind- 
ness.” 

Daisy said nothing, and, after a brief silence, he asked : 

“Do you understand any other language but English?” 

“No, sir,” she answered. “I don’t understand the En- 
glish language even. I have a very limited education.” 

“ That is a pity ,” he responded, with a shadow coming 
over his face. “But you have time enough yet for im- 
proving your mind, I judge that you are very young. 
You won’t mind telling an old man like me your age, will 
you?” he added, with a smile. 

“I will be seventeen my next birthday,” Daisy said. 

“Ah, you are nothing but a child,” the old man re- 
sponded. “You have much to learn, and much time, from 
the course of nature, to learn it in. What is your name, 
and where is your home?” 

“My name is Daisy,” she answered, speaking drearily. 
“I don’t claim any name but that— the one my mother 
gave me — and I have no home, and no friends. That is 
why I came here to apply for the position of companion. 
I must earn my own living.” 

With his eyes closed, Dr. Burnie seemed to be pon- 
dering. 

“ I think the blind have quicker intuitions than persons 
who see,” he said, after a while. “ I seem to have a subtle 
way of knowing when anything beautiful or pure is near 
me, and I feel that I can trust you. A gentleman who un- 
derstands some of the Oriental languages comes and reads 
to me every Friday evening. So I shall be satisfied with 
your interpretations of gems of English literature. Until 
a month ago, when she died, my sister, a single lady, lived 
with me, and I have been miserably lonely since she left 
me. Lucretia his sad tone lightened, and he smiled as 
he mentioned the name — “was my sister’s maid, and is a 
most excellent creature, but she scarcely possesses that 
witchery which would charm a blind man into forgetful 
ness of his misfortune, So, if you will stay with me I will 
pay you a salary of forty dollars per month, and will try 
not to be very troublesome to you. Now that you have 


DAISY DARRELL, 73 

seen me, do you think you could undertake such a 
char|:?e?” 

“ Yes, sir, I shall be very glad to stay,” Daisy answered. 

“It will be a lonely home for you for two weeks. When 
will you come?” he broke off to ask, as if suddenly re- 
minded. 

“As I told you, I have no home,” Daisy said, “and I 
will stay now, if you will let me.” 

‘ ‘ Certainly, certainly, ” he responded heartily. ‘ ‘ Lucretia 
will show you to your room, but before you go, I will 
finish what I began to say. For two weeks you will be 
lonely here, I am afraid, but at the expiration of that time 
my nephew and his wife will live with me. They were 
married this morning, and have gone on a bridal tour.” 

“ Married this morning!” 

Daisy’s heart gave a great throb. The words seemed to 
be a mention of the couple she had seen go through the 
mockery of a marriage that morning. 

“What is your nephew’s name?” she asked impulsively. 
And she seemed to be turned into stone again as she had 
seemed to be in the church in the morning as he answered : 

“Clifford Bancroft, and he married Miss Geraldine Fitz- 
gerald, a beauty from Kentucky.” 

The room seemed to be reeling, and the twilight gloom 
within it seemed suddenly to be blackened into a ray less 
night. Then it passed away again, and she saw the old doc- 
tor there before her, and heard him say, as one hears 
things in a dream : 

“ Lucretia, show Miss Daisy to her room.” 

Then she arose, and* followed the young woman, with a 
feeling of numbness over her, into a cozy little room up- 
stairs. 

“ I will light the lamp,” Lucretia said, while Daisy flung 
lierself into a chair. 

When the lamp was lighted and the woman had gone 
out leaving Daisy alone, she arose and threw herself across 
the bed, and for a long time she lay motionless with her 
arm over her eyes. 

The numbness had left her, and her mind was clear and 
active now, and she had been planning her future course. 
The chief result of that cogitation she muttered to herself 
just as Lucretia appeared to invite her down to supper. 

“ Come what will — happen what may— I will remain here 
until Clifford Bancroft comes !” 

It was a determination born of the recklessness of des- 
peration, and she shut her teeth down over the words in a 
manner indicative of a set purpose. 


74 


DAISY DARRELL. 


CHAPTER XIX. 

“he is not hers, but mine!” 

Daisy was not the same girl who had roamed over th^ 
hills of Pinelands so short a time before with her cousin 
Harry. 

Always Willful and impetuous ; always quick of temper 
and sharp of tongue, she had still shown a readiness to for- 
give even the most aggravating things. Her evil moods 
had always been transient ; her wrath like an April storrn, 
and her light-heartedness asserted itself and she was again 
as bright and cheerful as the song of a spring bird. 

But now she was changed, and the change was terribly 
for the worse. 

Since she had been turned into stone, as it were, by the 
sight of that unholy marriage, she had been mentally 
metamorphosed. 

As she tossed on her bed that first night of her stay 
under Dr. Burnie’s roof, it seemed to her that her brain 
was on fire with constantly brooding over that marriage. 

In the face of his treachery toward her, what was her 
feeling toward Clifford Bancroft? 

Did she still love him? 

She did not put the question to herself, and she could not 
have answered it if she had ; and yet he filled every nook 
and cranny, as it were, in her mind. 

She was conscious of only one feeling, and that was of 
intense bitterness toward him, and also toward her rival, 
whom she had that morning heard proclaimed his wife, 

“ Oh, for vengeance, vengeance upon them both!” 

That was the only aspiration she uttered to herself 
through all the lagging hours of that night. 

But how should she accomplish that vengeance? 

She asked herself that, and she answered by saying to 
herself that she would proclaim him as her own lawfully 
wedded husband ! 

She would brand him before the world as a bigamist, and 
she would crush Geraldine into the very dust of shame by 
revealing the terrible truth to her that she was no wife— 
that in the eyes of the world she was little better than the 

E ainted Magdalens from whose touch she gathered the very 
em of her garments in disdain. 

A wild exultation born of her state of semi-madness came 
over her, and she exclaimed to herself, with her eyes glit- 
tering in the light of the breaking dawn : 

“ He is not hers, but mine! Mine as fast as the law can 
bind him, and I will prove it !” 


DAISY DARRELL. 75 

As she said that she caught her breath with a sudden 
reminder. 

How could she prove it? What testimony had she to 
bring forward in support* of that assertion? What wit- 
nesses could she call on to declare that the secret marriage 
between herself and Clifford Bancroft had actually taken 
place? 

A certificate of that marriage had never been in her 
possession, and she held not one thread of proof to sub- 
stantiate her words. 

She must obtain proof. She would w^rite to the village of 
Dunbar, to the Reverend Mr. Crawford, for a certificate of 
that marriage rite which he could not possibly have for- 
gotten performing. 

She had no writing materials, and she was in a fever of 
impatience to see Dr. Burnie and to beg some from him. 

But in the course of three hours the letter was written, 
and she placed it in the mail box with her own hand. 

When that letter left her hand, her feverish unrest 
seemed to go with it. She grew strangely quiet, and Dr. 
Burnie found his companion a sort of automaton — seeming 
to have no will of her own, but still thoroughly obedient to 
his. 

She read to him whatsoever he selected ; she filled his 
pipe, and she struck the match for him to light it ; she 
stood at the window often for hours and described the 
scenes and the people on the street outside, and in a few days 
she became essential to his comfort. 

He often spoke of his nephew, Clifford Bancroft, the son 
of his only surviving sister, and he never wearied in des- 
canting on the brightness of his mind, and the purity of his 
character ; and Daisy would listen with strained intentness, 
and with shut teeth. 

Daisy had changed in mind, but a most remarkable 
physical change had taken place in her since John Gold- 
man had lifted her, like a broken lily, from the roadside. 

She looked at least ten years older^. 

Her face had lost its roundness and dimples since Clifford 
Bancroft in their little cottage had last looked down into 
those roguish blue eyes. 

They were not roguish eyes now, but thoughtful and 
shadowy, with dark rings under them. 

Daisy herself scarcely realized the change that had 
come over her ; it had been so gradual, and her mind had 
been so occupied with other things. 

She looked forward to the coming of Clifford Bancroft 
and his bride with an intense interest that had in it some- 
thing of horror. 


76 


DAISY DARRELL. 


She counted off every hour as it passed as shortening by 
so much the time of their coming. 

Like one under a baleful spell she watched the days go 
by, bringing nearer and nearer the hour in which she ex- 
pected to look upon his face, and to confound him with his 
treachery. 

But in that last expectation fortune seemed to be against 
her, for the Reverend Mr. Crawford had not answered her 
letter, and while she waited for it, time seemed to glide by 
with startling rapidity. 

The day came on which Clifford Bancroft and his wife 
were expected to arrive, yet no answer had come to her let- 
ter to the Reverend Mr. Crawford. 

The couple had been accompanied on their tour by Judge 
Bancroft and his wife and daughter — Clifford’s haughty 
“ Sister Mag and they were all expected to take tea at 
Dr. Burnie’s that evening. 

And what a grand supper it was to be ! The best caterer 
in the city had been employed to superintend it, and 
ordered to spare no expense in making it a banquet fit for 
the guests the wealthy old bachelor, Dr. Burnie, delighted 
to honor. 

“You must do the honors of the house, Daisy,” the old 
man said that afternoon, with his hand on the arm of his 
companion. “ I want to show them that if I have ^ot a 
bachelor establishment it will compare favorably with the 
home of the best among the Benedicts.” 

“ i will do my best,” she responded in a low, strained 
tone. 

That afternoon she met, for the first time, Professor 
Quinn, the scholarly friend of Dr. Burnie, who was accus- 
tomed to read to him, from some volume written in a for- 
eign tongue, at least one evening in each week. 

When Dr. Burnie introduced them to each other, Daisy 
noticed that Professor Quinn cast a keen glance at her 
through his spectacles, and there was something unac- 
countably unpleasant in the close and curious inspection 
she underwent from those bright eyes. 

There was in those same eyes a look of startled recogni- 
tion — a suggestion of their having met before. 

He did not mention it, however, if any such idea occur- 
red to him. 

He only bowed coldly and stiffly, and turned his atten- 
tion to the book he had selected to read that afternoon. 

Wrapped in a tumult of feeling, Daisy thought and cared 
nothing for him. She bowed to him, and went to her own 
room. 

As she passed the open door of the dining-room she 
glanced in. 


Daisy darrell. 


7? 

The table was already spread for the evening meal ; the 
chandelier was gleaming over glittering silver and glisten- 
ing china, and over salvers of cake and baskets of tropical 
fruit. 

Daisy had no toilet to make. The black dress, which 
had been Mrs. Goldman’s, and which that kind-hearted old 
lady had presented to her, was the only one she had there, 
so there was no choice with her but to wear it. 

Dr. Burnie had voluntarily paid her, three days before, 
a month’s salary, and she had invested it in clothing ; but 
neither of the two dark woolen dresses she had bought 
was made yet, so she could only freshen her toilet with a 
snowy collar and cuffs. 

In a strangely automatic way she made these changes. 

Then she went to her window, which commanded a view 
of the street, and stood gazing intently out. 

She was watching for the coming of Clifford Bancroft 
and his bride. 

But the twilight deepened into night and the bridal party 
came in the darkness, so that Daisy , saw them only as 
shadows coming through the gate. 

“ Was she dying ?” 

That idea drifted vaguely through her mind, because 
there was such a queer, dead feeling about her heart. 

Five minutes afterward Lucretia came to the door. 

“ Miss Daisy, Dr. Burnie says please to come down and 
let him introduce you to his company,” she said, in her 
broken, breathless way. 

Daisy slowly arose, and went down, as she had been 
bidden. 


CHAPTER XX. 

“she talks as ip she is demented!” 

Daisy’s face was as colorless as marble as she went slowly 
down the broad stairs, yet every nerve in her was athrill 
with excitement. 

At the foot of the stairway a mulatto man, who was Dr. 
Burnie’s special attendant, met her. 

“The doctor is in the library,” he said, and Daisy, un- 
derstanding from the information that the old gentleman 
wished to see her there, turned her steps in that direction, 
and entered the library. 

Dr. Burnie was seated in an easy chair, with his eyes 
closed as usual, and with a disturbed look on his face, and 
Professor Quinn was standing on the hearth a few feet from 
him. 

Catching the sound of his companioii’s light footsteps as 


DAISY DAHRELL. 


,78 

she entered the room, the old gentleman turned his face 
toward her, and said : 

“Come here, Daisy, and take a seat beside me. I have 
something to say to you, a piece of news to tell you that I 
hope — I most sincerely hope— you. will prove is not true.” 

Daisy had expected to see Clifford Bancroft and Geral- 
dine there, and a sort of blank feeling came to her when 
she missed them. 

She scarcely comprehended Dr. Burnie’s words, and cer- 
tainly they would have made, in the state of her mind, no 
impression on her, if the idea had not instantly flashed 
through her mind that the “ news” he referred to was her 
previous connection with Clifford Bancroft. 

She thought he had heard of that secret marriage, and 
was about to demand the truth of her, and she was pre- 
pared to tell it unflinchingly. 

She went forward and seated herself in the chair he had 
indicated for her to take beside him. 

“Professor Quinn tells me, my child — he is an old and 
tried friend of mine, and very jealous where my welfare 
and interest are concerned— that he saw you at a very dis- 
reputable place,” the old gentleman said kindly, and Pro- 
fessor Quinn looking down sharply at her through his 
spectacles, took up the theme, and said in a low, emphatic 
voice : 

“ Yes, I am sure I am not mistaken, for your face made 
such an impression on me at the time that I never forgot 
it. About two weeks ago, I saw you in Dan Devenant’s 
dance -house. I was passing along the street on my way 
to the restaurant where I usually take lunch, when I 
glanced in through an open window of that abominable 
establishment, and I saw you lying on a sofa, and Dan 
Devenantwas sitting beside you, bending over you. When 
I returned from the restaurant, after eating my lunch, I 
saw you coming out of the dance-house. When I met you 
here this afternoon I instantly recognized you as the pale- 
faced young woman I had seen in that disreputable place, 
and I felt it my duty to warn my old friend here, who, in 
his peculiar infirmity, is easily imposed on.” 

Daisy heard and comprehended his charge, but in con- 
sideration of that feverish anticipation of soon meeting 
and confounding Clifford Bancroft, it was as> nothing to 
her. 

“ Dan Devenant’s dance-house!” She remembered, when 
he mentioned it, that the bold, but seemingly kind-hearted 
man who had taken charge of her that miserable morning, 
had spoken those same words to her. Yes — she had been 
at Dan Devenant’s, And so the silence she maintained 


DAISY DARRSLL. 79 

after Professor Quinn had ceased speaking seemed to de- 
clare. 

“Daisy,” Dr. Burnie said, speaking earnestly; “the 
charge Professor Quinn brings against you is no light thing. 
A respectable man, even with all the superior privileges 
accorded to a man, would not dare be seen at Dan Deve- 
nant’s. It is notorious as one of the worst* places in New 
York. 1 hope the professor is mistaken, and it was not 
you he saw there.” 

For several minutes an old lady arrayed in heavy black 
silk, and with a tiny cap of white lace and lavender rib- 
bons adorning her gray curls, had been standing in the 
doorway listening to the conversation. She came forward 
and stood with her hand on the doctor’s chair. 

“ It is highly important that you should discover the truth 
in regard to the fact, brother. An unprincipled woman 
should not be sheltered for an hour under your roof. And 
in consideration of the fact that Professor Quinn usually, 
or I may say, always, knows what he is talking about, I 
advise that you pay the young woman whatever salary 
may be due her and send her away. It is a charge which, 
of course, she will deny.” 

She was a very haughty-looking old woman, and she 
gave her head a haughty toss as she ended. 

Looking up into that proud face, Daisy felt flashes of al- 
ternate heat and cold passing over her ; and there was a 
choking sensation in her throat. 

She noted the resemblance that face wore to Clifford 
Bancroft’s, and she knew that she was in the presence of 
his haughty mother, to whom he had been afraid to pre- 
sent her, with her hoydenish ways, as his wife, and her 
daughter. 

They were waiting for her to speak, and she made several 
efforts to do so, but her heart seemed to be fluttering in 
her throat, and she kept a guilty silence. 

“ I think I see how it is, brother, ” Mrs. Bancroft went on 
in that frigid way of hers. “And I reiterate my former 
suggestion. I hardly think the young woman is a fit com- 

E anion for my son’s wife, who is now an inmate of your 
ome.” 

At that announcement, as if pent-up waters had been 
suddenly set free, the hot blood with a leap and rush surged 
through Daisy’s veins. 

“Where is your son’s wife ?” she said hoarsely, her voice 
vibrating. 

The old lady answered haughtily, but yet with the civil 
ity of a refined person : 

“She is in her room, ill with heart-trouble.” Here she 
turned her eyes and her remarks to Dr. Burnie — “Clif- 


80 


DAISY DARRELL, 


ford is with her uncle, and he bade me say that he might 
not be able to join you as early as he would like, perhaps 
not before supper.” 

Daisy was trembling with fiery wrath now. 

At that moment, if she had been given the power, she 
would have slain Geraldine where she lay panting and 
moaning with her hand in the clasp of the man whom she 
believed to be her husband. 

Daisy arose to her feet, and drew a long, quivering 
breath. 

“ Greater humiliation may come on the woman who has 
gone through a marriage ceremony with your son two 
weeks ago, than the presence of a woman who was once 
taken in a state of unconsciousness into Dan Devenant’s 
dance-house can bring upon her. It would be a blessed 
thing for her, and a blessed thing for the man who mar 
ried her, if that woman was permitted to appear before 
her only as a person who had been seen in a disreputable 
house! You may take my word for it, that she will see 
that woman in another and a more blighting character.” 

So saying, and trembling violently, she went from the 
room, and Mrs. Bancroft and the professor stared after 
her, while Dr. Burnie said in a bewildered, troubled way: 

“ Why, what ails her? She talks as if she is de- 
mented.” 

“ Possibly she is,” his sister said, frigidly. “ You know 
nothing about how these waifs you pick up from the street 
may develop.” 

“ I am afraid that it will be best for me to follow your 
advice, sister,” Dr. Bumie said, with a sigh. “ But she 
has been a great comfort to nie, and I shall give her up with 
much regret. Her words were incoherent and inexplicable 
to me, and seemed to indicate aberration of mind which 
may have been caused momentarily, perhaps, by finding 
herself suspected and discharged from here, and she may 
have nowhere to go, poor girl. I wish you would open 
my secretary there, sister, and take forty dollars — a 
month’s wages for her— from the money-drawer, and take 
it to her. I don’t wish her to leave to-night, however.” 

Mrs. Bancroft did as she was bidden, and folding the 
money in an envelope she sent it up to Daisy’s room by the 
hand of the doctor’s trusty valet. 

In the meantime, Daisy was pacing up and down the 
floor of her room like a caged lioness. 

She was chafing under a bitter conviction that had come 
to her. 

If Clifford Bancroft denied that secret marriage, as of 
course he would if she should charge it oh him, what proof 
could she bring to substantiate her words? 


DAISY DARRELL. 


81 


Although the haunting memory of the wrong which had 
been done her seemed like a lash goading her into mad- 
ness, she saw that her vengeance for that wrong must yet 
be delayed. 

She would walk to Dunbar if need be, and get the testi- 
mony of the Reverend Mr. Crawford. 

The mulatto man knocked on her door, and handed in 
the envelope containing the money. 

There would be no necessity for her to walk to Dunbar. 
There was now no necessity for such delay, and she was 
burning to proclaim herself, and to claim her rights as the 
only law fill wife of Clifford Bancroft. 

Hurriedly she packed ^her slender wardrobe into a 
bundle, and went down-stairs. 

The lights shone over the great city like myriads of 
stars. 

The full moon hung like a silver plate over the old house 
she was leaving. 

She passed along th^ winding carriage road under the 
ancient trees. 

At a sudden bend in the road she started back, and her 
breath seemed to have been snatched from her. 

There, face to face in the wan moonlight, she met her 
treacherous husband, Clifford Bancroft ! 


CHAPTER XXI. 

‘‘IT WOULD BE WELL IP I WERE A GHOST!” 

Clifford Bancroft was as much shocked by the sud- 
den sight of Daisy there in the moonlight as she was by 
his unexpected appearance. 

He, too, started back, and a quick, sharp exclamation 
broke from him. 

‘ ‘ My God ! Who— what are you?” 

Daisy staggered back against a tree, and stood staring 
at him with her face showing white and rigid as the feat- 
ures of the dead. 

Clifford Bancroft made an effort to recover himself. 

He bent forward and peered into ;her face in the wan 
light. 

That face he saw looked years older than the rosy, dim- 
pled one it so closely resembled in its general outlines. 

Just as this woman looked with her set and colorless 
features, he fancied at the moment that Daisy might 
have looked when she ceased to struggle for life under the 
cruel water, and yielded the victory to Death. 

He shivered as that swift conviction came to] him, but 
after that moment’s close scrutiny, he lifted himself and 
said in an unsteady, unnatural voice : 


83 


DAISY DARRELL, 


“ I beg your pardon, but you so closely resembled a— a 
—some one I knew once, that I was startled as if I had seen 
a ghost.” 

In the ghastliness of her face, it was as hoiTible to see 
her teeth clash together as if she had indeed been a 
wraith. 

Through those set teeth she said in a tone hoarse with 
intensity : 

“ It would be well if I were a ghost, Clifford Bancroft I 
It would be be better for you to kill me now, and so make 
a ghost of me, than to let me live on for the revenge I am 
sure to take !” 

She lifted her clinched hand in the moonlight as if she 
were registering an oath, and her eyes blazed like those of 
a maniac. 

Clifford Bancroft did not suspect her identity. He be- 
lieved that Daisy was dead, and that he had himself seen 
the.clods thrown and packed over her coffin. An instant’s 
consideration had convinced him that her resemblance to 
his hoidenish, bright eyed child- wife was nothing more 
than a chance likeness. 

Her wild words and wilder manner convinced him that 
she was a maniac. 

What should he do with her? Should he give her in 
charge of a policeman, so that a watch might be kept over 
her to prevent her doing damage to herself or any one 
else? 

He turned his head and looked eagerly up and down the 
street beyond the iron fence of the yard. 

She saw that he really had failed to identify her ; and 
the expression of his face, as he looked so eagerly up and 
down the street, led her to suspect the truth— that he con- 
sidered her a suspicious character, or an insane person, 
who should not be allowed to go scot free at that dark 
hour. 

The quick, sharp rustle of her garments caused him to 
look around again to the spot where she had been stand- 
ing, but she was no longer there, and he saw her flitting 
away through the trees with the swiftness of a lapwing. 

“Poor thing,” he muttered. “Let her go where she 
will. Fortune will take care of her, I hope. Daisy would 
have looked like her if she had been ten years older, and 
insane. Dear little Daisy ! Dead, and so young !” 

He drew his hand across his eyes, and he walked away 
in the gloomy shadows of the trees— a bridegroom, but 
yet the most miserable man in the great city of New 
York. 

He glanced up and saw the light glowing from the win- 
dow of the room where Geraldine lay. 


DAISY DARRELL. 


83 ' 


“[She is a beautiful, grand-looking woman,” he muttered, 
“and in time I will learn to love her, when I have forgot- 
ten to be remorseful about Daisy.” 

While Clifford Bancroft was muttering that to himself, 
Daisy was making her way over the lamp-lighted streets, 
to a railroad depot, guided at every turn by the direction 
of some accommodating policeman of whom she made in- 
quiry. 

Two days afterward, and in the gray of the October 
twilight, she entered the village of Dunbar. 

There was the spire of the little church pointing upward 
in the misty light as it had done that hour when, as a 
bride, she had dreamily noticed it. She recognized it, and 
she knew that the parsonage of Reverend Mr. Crawford 
was immediately opposite the entrance of the church. 

So she made her w'ay in that direction, and soon she was 
knocking on the door of the little cottage. 

How well she remembered that vine-covered house, al- 
though she had looked on it in such a bewildering, but 
sweet, flutter of excitement ! 

So vividly every feature of that former scene came to 
her that it seemed impossible for anything pertaining to 
that quiet home to change, and she was surprised when a 
man who was not Mr. Crawford, but who .yet wore a de- 
cidedly clerical appearance, opened the door to her. 

“I want to see Mr. Crawford,” Daisy said eagerly. 

“ Mr. Crawford is not here,” the gentleman answered in 
a slow, deliberate way. He has gone as a missionary to 
the East Indies. He sailed five weeks ago yesterday.” 

Gone to the East Indies ! 

A sickening sense of disappointment swept over poor 
Daisy ; it seemed that fate was conspiring against her. 

“Give me his address, please,” she said, with, her lip 
beginning to quiver. 

“ I am very sorry that I cannot do so,” Mr. Crawford’s 
successor said kindly. “ I am not at all acquainted with 
him, but I understand that he never corresponds with any 
one. He is a. very zealous worker in the Master’s cause, 
and travels from place to place, and from country to 
country sometimes, as a self-appointed missionary, doing 
all the good he can.” 

“ Thank you,” Daisy said, and she turned away, feeling 
bitterly resentful toward the Providence which had so 
baffled her. 

The reverend gentleman called after her : 

“ Won’t you come into the house? My wife will be glad 
to entertain you.” 

Daisy glanced back, and shook her head, and went away. 

The twilight was deepening into night, and through the 


84 


DAISY DARRELD 


gloom she saw the red and green lights of a steamboat ap- 
proaching the landing of the village. 

An impulse seized her to take passage on that boat, and 
to go wherever it should take her ; so she accordingly made 
her way to the landing and entered the steamer. 

It proved to be a packet bound for Cincinnati, and she 
paid for her passage to that place. 

It was a beautiful evening, and the October breeze float- 
ing up the river was delightfully invigorating, and Daisy 
passed most of her time on the guards of the boat. 

There were very few passengers on board, ahd in the 
troubled state of her mind Daisy took no notice of them, 
and they paid no attention to her. 

They were nearing Cincinnati, and plainly visible on the 
sky was the cloud of soot and smoke that always blots the 
blue above a great city. 

Leaning on the railing of the guards, Daisy stood staring 
moodily at the black, sulphurous columns going upward, 
when she was startled by the sound of a fall, simultaneously 
with which came a sharp cry of pain. 

She turned to see an old woman lying prostrate on the 
floor a few feet away from her with her leg twisted 
dangerously. 

She had slipped on a banana peal which some one had 
carelessly thrown there. 

Daisy ran to her and knelt beside her, and endeavored to 
raise her, but the old woman shrieked with the additional 
pain caused by the movement. 

“Oh! Oh! I shall die! My leg is broken! Do some- 
thing for me !” she cried. 

Several others came up by this time, and the unfortunate 
woman was borne to her state-room, and Daisy, moved by 
an impulse of kindness, which happily weakened the 
memory of her own suffering and wrongs, accompanied 
her, and set herself to work to relieve as far as possible the 
agony occasioned by the injured limb. 

It was not broken, as the old lady had declared, but the 
ankle was badly sprained, and was dreadfully swollen and 
feverish. 

Daisy was naturally a good nurse, and she had gentle 
and magnetic hands, and under her soothing touches and 
judicious ministrations the sufferer experienced a grateful 
sense of relief. 

They were entering port, when the old lady asked, with 
her restless black eyes fixed on Daisy’s face : 

“ Do you live in Cincinnati?” 

“ No,” she answered, speaking in a hard, defiant way ; “ I 
have no home, I am going to Cincinnati in search of em- 
ployment.” 


DAISY DARRELL, . 85 

A pondering look came into the shrewd black eyes up- 
lifted to hers. 

Just then a knock came on the door and the chamber- 
maid looked in. 

“ We’ve landed,” she said laconically. 

Daisy arose from the bedside on which she had been 
sitting, and held her hand out to her charge. 

“I must bid you good-bye,” she said. 

The old woman grasped her hand and clung to it, while 
she looked up into the fair face bending over her, with a 
hesitating but wistful look in her shrewd eyes. 

“I am very poor, very,” she said emphatically, “but I 
live alone, and I will be compelled to have some one stay 
with me until I am able to get about myself ; and as you 
haven’t anywhere to stay in Cincinnati, you might come 
along with me. I can give you a bed free, and you can 
help along toward getting provisions yourself, maybe.” 

She put the interrogatory in a tone of great anxiety, and 
Daisy answered : 

‘ ‘ I had as well be with you, and better, perhaps, than 
with anybody else, until I get some kind of employment. 
So I will go with you.” 

Thus it was settled, and Daisy went to the poor little 
shanty which was the home of her new acquaintance, and 
which was certainly comfortless enough to justify the old 
woman’s assertion that she “was very poor.” 

It was an old, crumbling brick cottage containing three 
rooms, which were in a most forlorn condition from the 
inroads of time and decay. There was scarcely a comfort 
to be found in one of them. A rickety bedstead, badly 
furnished with bedding, a few broken chairs, an unsteady 
table, a cracked cooking-stove, and an old-fashioned cor- 
ner cupboard, comprised the appointments of the place, 
and were in keeping with the old house. 

In her loneliness and desolation, Daisy’s heart went out 
in a sort of fierce sympathy— if such an expression may be 
allowed or understood— to this old woman, whom, in her 
poverty and helplessness, chance or fate, whichever ruled 
the hour, had thrown in her way. 

She slept on the bare floor that night, and early the next 
morning while Miss Priscilla Haines, the name of herpro- 
tegee, was still sleeping — she went out into the city, and 
with an unsparing hand she purchased from her own 
slender resources some necessary articles of food and pro- 
visions, which the old lady seemed keenly to appreciate, 
but she seemed greatly disturbed at the money they had 
cost, and spoke much of it. 

“You don’t know, maybe, what it is,” she said, “to be 
without money. Money is a great friend, my dear, and 


86 


DAISY DARRELL. 


hold on to it as strongly as you can. I never had any to 
hold on to,” she said, with great emphasis, as if moved by 
a strange desire to impress that fact on Daisy’s mind. ‘ ‘ I 
am very poor — very poor indeed.” 

She harped so much on this one subject, that Daisy came 
to think that the old woman’s mind was weakening with 
her body, and so was unusually patient and gentle with 
Her. 

Miss Priscilla had never left her bed to sit up for any 
length of time since Daisy had been with her. She was 
very old, and, perhaps, she was unable to rally from the 
shock of that painful fall. Certain it was that she was 
gradually passing away, and Daisy saw it, and resolved to 
remain until the last with the poor creature who had not 
a known relative on earth. So she stayed with her, and 
worked hard and patiently for her. 

She had still some of the money which Dr. Burnie had 
paid her, and she had been fortunate enough to secure 
sewing from a house furnishing ready-made wardrobes. 
So the old woman’s last days were passed in more comfort 
than she had known for many and many a year. 

Miss Priscilla Haines had been the only child of a mill- 
ionaire, so tradition stated ; and how she had run through 
with the immense fortune he had bequeathed her at his 
death no one could tell. The fact only was patent to the 
public that from her palatial home on Walnut Hills she had 
come to live and die, after a gradual descent, in that 
tumble-down cottage in the alley. 

For over fourteen months Daisy had been with her, min- 
istering unmurmuringly to her wants, when her release 
came, and Miss Priscilla’s also, for she died, and Daisy’s 
last cent went to defray the expenses of her burial. 

Never in her short but eventful life had the poor girl felt 
lonelier than when she turned away from the humble 
grave which hid the only person to whose happiness she 
had come to be essential, and went back to the little cot- 
tage. 

How desolate it was with the gray of the twilight falling 
over it, and its shadows gathering in it ! 

With a choking sob, Daisv threw herself on the bed and 
clasped in her arms the pillow on which the head of her 
old friend had lain. 

Her hand touched a folded paper that was under the 
sheet, and she arose and lighted the lamp and examined it. 

She saw a few lines addressed to herself, written in the 
tremulous but clear characters of Miss Priscilla Haines. 

She read, with staring eyes : 

“ My dear Daisy, — In consideration of your kindness to 


DAISY DARRELL, 


87 


me, I bequeath what you may find under the flat rock in 
the left chimney corner. Priscilla Haines.” 


CHAPTER XXII. 

“l AM NO LONGER HELPLESS, BUT POWERFUL!” 

When the first surprise occasioned by that singular 
communication had worn off, Daisy thought that she un- 
derstood how it had been written. 

“It is only one of the poor old woman’s vagaries,” she 
said, huskily, “but I will keep it in memory of her, as it 
is the only scrap of her writing I have ever seen, and it 
shows that she knew I wanted to make her comfortable.” 

With a reverential touch she refolded the paper and 
placed it in her bosom, and then she blew out the light, 
and lay down again on the bed with the darkness growing 
deeper over her, and seeming to symbol the future that 
stretched in its unreadable mystery before her. 

The recent presence of Death, which has always a pow- 
erful influence for good or for evil on every sensitive na- 
ture, had touched and softened her in every respect save 
in that intense bitterness toward Clifford Bancroft for the 
foul wrong he had done, and which she had never for a 
moment forgotten. 

He had trifled with her love ; he had violated her trust ; 
he had blighted her life ; he had heartlessly cast all mem- 
ory of her from him, and had married another woman. 
He had given to another woman the honored place at his 
side which was by right hers and hers only 1 

For this, she would bring destruction down upon him, 
and upon the woman he had so honored ! 

She told herself that as she lay there on the bed with 
that keen sense of desolation over her. 

But in her state of miserable poverty and friendlessness 
how far he seemed to be removed from her in his wealth 
and pride ! 

Money would compass anything. Oh, if she only had 
money 1 

It was the cant of Miss Priscilla, and it reminded her of 
her. 

‘ ‘ Her mind ran so much on her poverty that I suppose 
she fancied that she had a large fortune somewhere, and it 
was in that freak that she wrote to me about finding some- 
thing under the flat rock in the corner of the chimney,” 
Daisy muttered sadly. 

She dismissed the subject from her thoughts — or rather 
it was superseded by that unvarying idea of the wrong 
that more than a year ago had been done her, and of the 
retribution which she meant, if possible, should follow it, 


88 


DAISY DARRELL. 


But when she fell into a broken sleep after awhile, she 
dreamed of that tremulously written communication, and 
that the object hidden under the rock was the certificate of 
her marriage with Clifford Bancroft. 

She awoke with a start. Day was breaking, and its first 
dim light was in the room, lending to each object a ghostly 
and gloom-inspiring appearance. 

Oh, what a miserable thing it was to awaken to a sense of 
existence ! Daisy thought — to feel the burden of life upon 
you so heavy — so heavy ! 

In her dream she had seen the proof of her marriage so 
distinctly lying under the fiat rock that the awakening to 
the mockery of the vision seemed the very perfection of 
cruelty. 

The feverish tide was beginning to flow again through the 
veins and arteries of the great city, and the sound thereof 
crept to Daisy’s ears through the sluggish alley. 

It meant business — it meant bread, and she had neither. 

For a day or two before Miss Priscilla’s[death she had been 
idle ; no work had been given out by the house for which 
she was employed to sew, and the burial expenses of her 
friend had drained her little purse of its last cent. She 
must go out this morning and find work, she told herself, 
or she would starve. 

She arose and bathed her haggard face, and then she 
went to the little corner cupboard and ate for her break- 
fast the few scraps of bread it contained. 

It was very early yet. As she drew aside the muslin cur- 
tain she had looped over the sunken window, she saw that 
the gray of the dawn was not veined by a gleam of the ris- 
ing sun. The house for which she sewed was not open 
yet, and would not be for at least a half hour; so she must 
wait. 

She was restless, and she employed herself by making 
the room tidy. That was a smaU job, and it was soon ac- 
complished, and as she paused at the window, folding her 
hands on her breast, a sudden idea occurred to her. 

She would go*’out and raise that rock and see what there 
really was under it. 

It was a very old house, and the chimney was built 
against the outside wall after the old-fashioned mode of 
architecture, so there were deep corners on either side of it. 

Daisy had never noticed the rock, but she found it, as 
the note stated, in the left-hand corner. Only its surface 
was visible, for it was imbedded deep in the soil. It was 
flat, and would have measured about two feet either way 
across the top. 

It was no small job to move it ; evidently it had not been 
disturbed for yeeirs; but Dais^ grew int;erested ip 


DAISY DARRELL, 89 

effort ; the resistance it offered stimulated her to renewed 
exertion. 

She went hack into the house, and brought an old iron 
shovel to her assistance. 

With that implement she dug the soil from around it, 
and she saw that the rock was only about five inches in 
thickness, and that with the stout shovel she could easily 
pry it up. 

She accordingly brought all her strength to bear upon it, 
and in less than a minute it was lying wuth its moldy 
under side upward beside the moldy bed in which it had 
been. 

Daisy, panting and perspiring, looked curiously down on 
that bed, and saw only a few earth-worms burrowing 
from sight, and caught the musty smell of the mildewed 
ground. 

She was not disappointed ; she had really expected noth- 
ing else, and the experiment had been made only to kill 
time. 

With no object whatever in view, she lifted the shovel 
and struck it heavily into the wet ground her labor had 
exposed. 

It went down for about two inches, and then it struck 
against something on which it rested. 

“ It is another rock,” Daisy muttered to herself. 

But she set to work, and diligently scooped the soil 
from it. 

Was it indeed another rock? 

She knelt down and with her hand she brushed away 
the clinging earth. 

No, it was not stone, it was some dark metal, and her 
heart began to palpitate with excitement. 

What was it? She could not unearth it with her fingers. 

She brought the shovel to her assistance again, and in 
five minutes’ time the object was exposed. 

It was a leaden box about one foot and a half square, 
and it was so heavy that she could not move it from its 
place. 

She was entirely secluded from sight ; a blank wall shut 
in the small yard on either side, so only the rising sun 
looked upon her as she knelt there tugging at the buried 
box. 

She could pry it out with the iron shovel, as she had 
done the stone that covered it ; in the frenzy of excitement 
which had come over lier when she found that there really 
was something hidden “under the flat rock in the left 
chimney corner,” she had forgotten that mode of working. 

She recollected it now, and she brought the lever to bear 


90 


DAISY DARRELL. 


upon the box and in a minute it was lying wet and moldy 
on the upper ground. 

She could not lift it; she found that it was the weight of 
the box, rather than its having been wedged in the hole, 
which prevented her moving it with her natural power 
before. It was in its heaviness like a great lump of solid 
lead. 

But she could convey it into the house by rolling it over 
and over, and that she did. 

The house for which she had been employed, and which 
she had resolved to visit that morning in order to procure 
more work, had been open for an hour, but in her excite- 
ment at finding the box she had forgotten her proposed 
errand. 

“ How should she open it?” she asked herself, kneeling 
beside it, and picking at it with her fingers, which were 
all too weak to break that rusty lock. 

The trouble she had passed through had not, killed her 
natural characteristics — one of the chief of which was 
a desire to inquire into whatever mystified her. 

So, for the time, utterly forgetful of everything else, she 
was wild with curiosity to see the contents of that strong- 
box. 

She looked around the room for some implement to assist 
her, and her eyes lighted on a flint rock which Miss Pris- 
cilla had used in years gone by to light her fires, by strik- 
ing sparks from it with a bit of steel. 

Daisy seized on it, and began to pound the rusty lock. 

At the third stroke, the bolt was broken, and the lid flew 
back. 

What she saw then actually took away her breath to look 
upon. 

Tliere, glittering in the morning light that fell upon 
them were coins of gold, filling the box to the very top I 

There were dollars that amounted to hundreds of thou- 
sands in number, and yet Priscilla Haines, while the right- 
ful and conscious possessor of them all, had lived and died 
in poverty the most abject ! 

The girl who had inherited them was so dazed by her 
great good luck, that foi^ fully five minutes she could only 
sit there on the bar5 floor and stare at her treasure trove 
with wide eyes and dropped jaw. 

The realization came suddenly to her, and she sprung to 
her feet, tossing her arms upward with wild exultation, 
exclaiming in a voice hoarse and tremulous: 

“lam no longer helpless, but powerful— powerful— as 
Clifford Bancroft will find out !” 


DAISY DAttRELL. 


91 


CHAPTER XXIII. 

“ I ADVISE YOD TO KEEP AN EYE ON YOUR HUSBAND WHEN 
HE COMES !” 

Christmas had come, setting the children wild with the 
advent of Santa Claus, more abundantly and richly en. 
dowed than usual, in the city of New York. 

But the older people, at least as many of them as com- 
prised the creme de la creme of society, were wild over the 
advent of some one else. 

That person was called the “ Beautiful Mystery,” because 
so little was known about her. 

She had appeared in the city a few weeks before, and by 
the rare perfection of her face and figure, as well as by the 
boundless wealth in which she seemed to float, she almost 
immediately became, in vulgar parlance, “the rage,” and 
was sought out and courted by the very haughtiest people 
in the city. 

She was known as Madame Astrsea, and none questioned 
the genuineness of the classic cognomen. 

The “Goddess of Justice,” her name implied, and her 
face declared her the goddess of beauty. 

- No one would have recognized in this Madame Astrsea, 
robed in velvet and glittering in diamonds, Daisy Darrell, 
the hoyden who with her cousin Harry had tramped over 
the hills and vales and climbed the trees at Pinelands less 
than two years before. 

Yet Madame Astrsea and Daisy Darrell were one and 
the same person; or rather, Madame Astrsea had been 
Daisy Darrell, for the metamorphosis which had changed 
the trusting girl into the revengeful woman had left not a 
vestige of her old nature seemingly, and had changed the 
mobile features into a semblance of beautifully chiseled 
marble. 

She had changed her flaxen hair into snow-white, andl 
instead of the short curls she had worn as Daisy Darrell, 
a glistening coil rested like a coronet on her shapely 
head. 

Instead of the fresh, dimpled girl of sixteen who had 
rashly eloped with Clifford Bancroft from Pinelands, she 
looked like a woman of at least twenty-six. 

She had some five weeks before appeared in New York 
“from the Old World,” somebody surmised, and “so- 
ciety ” took up the assertion, and declared that she had^ 
jcome from the Old World, and that she was the widow of 
,a young English soldier who had died of a fever in the East 
-Indies, 


93 


DAISY DABBELL. 


This story had its origin, as all such stories have, in a 
supposition that gradually grew into a positive assertion, 
and no one thought to question its truth. 

Her home was spoken of as a palace, and it was cer- 
tainly one of the grandest in New York. 

The house was a marvel of architecture, which had been 
offered for sale on the demise of its former owner, and 
Madame Astraea had purchased it through an attorney, 
and had proceeded to furnish it in a style of ma^ificence 
wonderful even for that city of wealth and vanity. 

As we have said, Madame Astraea was “the rage,” and 
she had calls and invitations from the bou ton without 
number. 

But none of those attentions had come from Clifford Ban- 
croft, or his wife, for they were somewhere in the south of 
France, whither they had gone for the benefit of Geraldine’s 
health. 

The newspapers, in their “ society notes,” had announced 
that they were on their way home, and it was expected 
by their friends that they would reach New York in time 
to attend the grand New- Year ball which would be the 
event of the winter. 

It was, indeed, a grand affair— that ball. All the elite 
of the great city were there decked in their grandest attire. 

The vast parlors of a merchant prince were ablaze with 
light that fell like a mist of gold from glittering chandeliers 
on tlie brilliant assemblage, and music, bewildering in its 
ebb and flow, kept time to their dancing feet. 

It was really Madame Astrsea’s first appearance at a ball 
and her arrival was eagerly watched for, because she was 
as yet a novelty— a sensation of which they had not tired. 

“ Her toilets are superb,” a gushing belle remarked en- 
thusiastically to Geraldine, who had really arrived in time 
for the ball, and who, in company with her husband, had 
appeared there an hour before. “ And then she is so per- 
fectly beautiful! The gentlemen all rave about her, and 
fall in love with her — both married and single. I advise 
you to keep an eye on your husband when she comes ” 

The young girl spoke laughingly, but no responsive smile 
came to Geraldine’s proud lips. 

She turned her regal head, with its coils of jet black hair 
toward a crowd in the center of which Clifford was stand- 
ing and was clearly visible because of his superior height. 

They were friends of his who had gathered around him 
in order to welcome him back to his home, and who tarried 
only a few minutes and then passed on to others. 

While Geraldine’s eye was on him, she saw him separate 
from these friends, and move carelessly away to a deep 


DAISY DAliRELL. 


93 


window where, half hidden by the lace curtains, he stood 
and glanced listlessly over the crowd. 

As she looked at him, a shadow fell over Geraldine’s face 
that marred its beauty — a shadow that had often been 
there during the sixteen months of her wedded life. 

Her husband was by far the handsomest man in the 
room, and she was proud of him, but he was always cold 
and gloomy. 

Nothing seemed to charm, nor even to interest him, and 
loving him with all the strength of her nature as she did, 
it made her unhappy. 

She had become vaguely suspicious. Something was be- 
tween him and her which held them apart, but which she 
could not understand, and could not tear away. 

Slie had never spoken to him of it but once, and that was 
amid the spicy breezes and rich blooms of the south of 
France, and then he had answered weaiily, putting her 
clinging arms gently from around his neck : 

“1 am not demonstrative, Geraldine — that is all.” 

But it was not all, and in her heart of hearts she felt it. 

Yet from that hour she proudly held her peace, and that 
vague something which held them apart grew day by day. 

About the last arrival at the ball was Madame Astraea. 

She came in company with her legal adviser, an old 
gentleman who knew vastly more about her possessions 
than he did about herself. In fact, he knew nothing more 
about her than did any one else who met her in New York. 

He accompanied her to the door of the dressing-room, 
and left her there to be divested of her ermine and velvet 
wrapping. 

She started involuntarily as she caught sight of the 
woman in attendance there, who came forward to assist 
her. 

That woman was Bridget Conner. 

“ Bridget will recognize me! If she does not, then no 
one else can,” Daisy whispered tremulously under hei\ 
breath. 

The faithful hands of the Irishwoman, which had so 
often touched her in affection, and the honest eyes which 
had looked so often into hers, were', on her now. 

There was a keen scrutinizing look in the eyes, but there 
was no recognition. 

How Daisy longed to throw her arms around that stout 
figure, and feel the throbbings of that true heart against 
her own ! 

But she restrained herself; she even gazed fearlessly into 
the “ eyes of Irish blue,” and asked, as a perfect test of her 
state of incognito : 

“Will you look closely at me, please, and see if my hair 


94 


DAISY DARRELL, 


is disarranged, or my face smutted with the dust and soot 
that are always flying about the streets?” 

Bridget did as she was requested, and shook her head 
with a little smothered sigh. 

‘‘ Sure, ye’re all right, and as putty as a blessed angel.” 

“ Thank you,” Daisy said, and then she asked carelessly. 

“ Did you ever see any one who resembled me?” 

Again Bridget shook her head and sighed: 

“No; I never knew any one like ye, but ye make me 
think of a poor, sweet creature that’s gone !” 

Daisy turned to descend to the parlors. 

“ I am safe ; he will not recognize me,” she muttered. 

The light words of the young girl, “I advise you to 
keep an eye on your husband when she comes,” worried 
Geraldine. 

Already an instinctive jealousy toward this fascinating 
Madame Astraea, whom neither she nor her husband, to 
her knowledge, had ever seen, sprung up in her heart. 

Geraldine was herself a beautiful and an attractive 
woman, and she and the young girl were not left alone to- 
gether more than five minutes before they were joined by 
two military dignitaries. 

“Ah, madam, I am fortunate in finding you disen- 
gaged,” one of them said, bending stiffly to offer his arm 
to the lady. “Will you honor me by taking a promenade 
with me?” 

Geraldine placed her hand on his arm and they saun- 
tered off together. 

“This Madame Astrsea,” Geraldine said, speaking ab- 
ruptly, “ tell me, is she so very beautiful— so very fascinat- 
ing ?” 

Colonel Devere bent his shaggy head reverentially. 

“Until your arrival, madam, she was the most beautiful 
— the most fascinating woman in New York.” 

At that moment, Madame Astrsea, leaning on the arm 
of her white-haired attorney, entered the room, and was 
instantly surrounded by a bevy of persons, prominent 
among whom were, of course, the host and hostess. ‘ 

Geraldine caught but a momentary glimpse of a woman 
with snowy hair, arrayed in a robe of dark blue velvet, 
which swept in a long train from a petticoat of old gold 
satin elaborately embroidered in roses and birds of para- 
dise, and diamonds glittered in her hair and on her neck 
and arms. 

In a half minute the figure so richly attired was hidden 
from Geraldine’s sight, and no suspicion flashed through 
her mind that this “beautiful myster^ —this petted and 
toasted idol of society— was her hoydenish cousin Daisy, 


DAISY DARBELD 


95 


Colonel Devere, as he walked on with her, remarked, 
uttering the truth unconsciously: 

“ Tluit is your rival.” 

Saying tliat, he passed along the wide parlors, and it was 
a luilf hour before Geraldine again caught a sight of her 
husband. 

She met him walking arm-in-arm with a gentleman, and 
as the two couples approached each other, the gentleman 
who was with Clifford remarked, laughingly: 

“ Your husband was desperate at your absence, madam, 
and I proposed the best substitute that I could tlunk of for 
your charming society, that of Madame Astraea. I am 
taking him now to introduce him to her.” 

So smilingly they passed on toward the “beautiful 
mystery.” 


CHAPTER XXIV. 

“perhaps I REMIND YOU OP SOME ONE YOU HAVE KNOWN!” 

Daisy was standing in the center of a coterie of ad- 
mirers, showing like a queen in the magnificence of her 
attire. 

In a glance which she cast beyond her entertainers, she 
saw two gentlemen approaching her. 

One of them was Clifford Bancroft. 

At the sight of him a shock, something like that pro- 
duced by a galvanic battery, went through her. 

For an instant a dark flush stained her face, and then it 
receded, leaving her of an unearthly whiteness. The 
pupils of her eyes dilated until only a slender rim of blue 
was visible around them, and they glittered like stars. 

“ Madame Astrsea, permit me to present my friend, Mr. 
Clifford Bancroft, of this city.” 

The words had been pronounced by Clifford’s companion, 
and Madame Astrsea turned her face toward them as if 
just apprised of their proximity. 

She raised her eyes and fixed them full on the dreamy 
black orbs which she remembered so well, and she saw, or 
fancied she saw, a startled look break for a moment into 
them as they gazed down into her upturned face. 

It was only a momentary expression, however, and then 
it died away, and his handsome head was bent low before 
her for an instant, and then his voice — that low, courteous 
voice she remembered so well— spoke to her, saying: 

“ May I have the honor of this waltz with Madame As- 
trsea ?” 

“No,” she answered, and her tone, although perfectly 
calm, had an unnatural sound, “ I do not intend to dance 
to-night,” 


96 


DAISY DAnnELL, 


Her eyes, still dark and glittering, and looking black in 
the gaslight, had never been removed from his, and he 
gazed into them with a strange thrill at his heart. 

Yet he had seen in them no reminder of the saucy blue 
eyes of his child wife, Daisy. 

A powerful magnetism seemed to attract him to this 
woman. He felt himself drawn to her as by an invisible 
cord. , , , 

He forgot the presence of the coterie of admirers he had 
disturbed. He bent his head and spoke to her: 

“ Will you not promenade with me ?” 

Unhesitatingly she placed her hand on his arm, and with 
a bow and a smile of adieu to the party she was leaving 
she walked away with him. 

There was a singular feeling over Daisy. She seemed to 
herself to have lost her individuality. She felt as if she 
were a sort of stranger to herself, because she did not un- 
derstand the feeling that was over her. 

What, at that moment, was the sentiment she enter- 
tained toward this man who had been the one love of her 
life? 

She could not have told, had the question been put to her. 
She only knew that every pulse was athrill within her. 

They spoke not a word. They passed down the brill- 
iantly lighted parlors ; they threaded the crowd in silence, 
unconscious of the attention they attracted, as a rarely 
handsome couple. 

They were not conscious, either, of that silence, which 
neither of them had any desire to break. 

They entered the conservatory, which was lighted by col- 
ored lamps, and sweet with the breath of myriads of 
flowers. 

They seated themselves on a rustic bench beside the 
fountain, where a marble Hebe, gracefully poised, poured 
^ a ceaseless stream of water from a marble cup, making a 
' drowsy music. 

Madame Astraea looked at the lily bending over the pool, 
and sprinkled with the crystal drops, as with diamonds — 
and Clifford Bancroft looked at her. 

“We have met, I know, for the first time to-night,” he 
said, speaking softly, “yet it seems to me that I have 
known you for a long, long time.” 

She turned and looked full into his face in the tender 
light, and her eyes, with their distended pupils, looked 
dark and starry. 

“ Perhaps I remind you of some one you have known,” 
she said, speaking abruptly, while a dash of red stained the 
marble whiteness of her face. 

He shook his head slowly. 


t>AISY DARRELL. M 

At the first mement I saw you, you really did bring to 
my mind a memory of some one else. But the likeness be- 
tween you and that person, is the likeness which exists be- 
tween a star and a glow-worm.” 

A feeling of fiery indignation rose up in her heart against 
him for uttering that comparison. 

Daisy Darrell was dead, and Madame Astrsea had arisen 
like a phoenix from her ashes. 

But she resented the insult which had been offered to her 
better self, and she spoke bitterly : 

“ The glow-worm, humble though it may have been, was 
instinct with feeling — the star is not.” 

He looked keenly down into the glowing face. 

She did remind him of Daisy, surely— -perhaps that 
was why she seemed to come to him from the past, he 
thought. Yet, how different from his guileless, hoydenish 
child- wife, this proud and transcendently beautiful woman 
vims! 

It was herself that interested him— not the faint likeness 
she bore to Daisy. It was herself, and not the memory she 
awakened, that seemed to be drawing his very heart out of 
his bosom. 

“You do yourself injustice,” he said, with something of 
vehemence, “when you compare yourself to a star in its 
soullessness. It is only in its unapproachable beauty that 
you are like it. I believe you are capable of the strongest, 
deepest feeling. If you loved, I believe it would be for all 
time and with a constantly growing intensity.” 

The feverish eyes were lifted to his as she responded in a 
strange, repressed tone : 

“ I might love as you say, until that love was slighted- 
and then it would turn into hate. You know that some 
poet has written that ‘ Hell has no fury like a woman 
scorned.’ And if you have ever scorned one— or ever do — 
you may find out the truth of that assertion.” 

There was a subtle menace in her words and tones that 
struck a chill through him. 

It seemed to him that she had thrown down the gantlet 
of defiance to him— and a swift, unaccountable presenti- 
ment came to him that between him and her there would 
be -war — relentless war— until one should conquer the 
other. 

Since he had first looked into the face of this “beautiful 
mystery,” no thought of Geraldine had entered his mind; 
but at tliis moment he was strongly reminded of her, for 
she came into the conservatory, leaning on the arm of their 
host. 

There was a sullen fire in her eyes, and a sullen look on 


98 DAISY DARUELL. 

her face, as she spoke to Clifford, without casting a glance 
toward his companion. 

“Mr. Bancroft, I have been searching for you every- 
where. It is time for us to make our adieus and retire. 
You have forgotten that I am still somewhat of an in- 
valid.” 

There was a world of resentment in her voice and man- 
ner as she said that, turning away to go out of the green- 
house. 

“Don’t let me detain you. Go with— your wife,” Ma- 
dame Astraea said, rising. 

He winced at the tone of her voice ; there was so much 
contempt in it, that it seemed to burn him. 

Yet why should she look with disdain on Geraldine, 
who, next to herself, was the most beautiful woman at the 
ball? he asked himself. But he felt no anger toward her 
for the disparagement of his wife. He only felt how hard 
it was to tear himself away from this fascinating strange#; 
he only felt that he must see her again, and that very 
soon. 

“May I call on you at your own home to-morrow even- 
ing?” he asked, as they walked out of the conservatory 
together. 

“ Yes,” she responded. “ I shall be at home to you and 
you only.” 

To herself she added: “ The charm works, ‘The wife’ 
is evidently jealous and quick to take alarm. She has 
taken alarm, I think, and she will be hurt. So will he, or 
my name was never Daisy Darrell. ‘The mills of the 
gods grind slowly, but they grind exceeding small.’ ” 

Even while those ominous ideas were running through 
her mind, she was smiling up into Clifford Bancroft’s face, 
who was looking down into her eyes with his whole soul 
shining in his own. 

“Until to-morrow evening, then, good-bye,” he said, 
bending so low over her that Geraldine, who saw him at 
the moment, set her teeth together, and clinched her hands 
in the first spasm of that jealousy which was destined to 
bring about great results in the bitter after-time. 

“I’ll watch you, Madame Astraea,” she whispered to 
herself. “ I’ll tear the mystery from you I You can’t de- 
ceive me 1” 


CHAPTER XXV. 

“I DO NOT FEAR HER!” 

The day following the New Year's ball was bitterly cold. 
The wind rushed up the streets, whistling keenly through 


DAISY DARRELL. 99 

the falling sleet, and smiting with an ague-fit the pedestri- 
ans who were not strongly fortified against its power. 

The most shivering of these pedestrians was John Gold- 
man, who never could stand the cold, as he frequently 
declared. Great, warm-liearted fellow that he was, it was 
no wonder he found something exceedingly antagonistic 
to the cold weather in his nature. 

So he shivered as he plodded along the street, and Daisy, 
standing at the window of her palatial home, saw him. 

Over the marble whiteness which her face had worn for 
so many months broke a bright flush. 

She turned and spoke hurriedly to a young girl who was 
sitting and sewing in the room, and said : 

“Miss Woodruff, -will you do me the favor to call that 
man in the fur cap who has just passed, and tell him I 
want to see liim? his name is John Goldman.” 

The young seamstress was on her feet in an instant, and 
had darted from the room. 

Five minutes afterward she reappeared, and John Gold- 
man, cap in hand, and looking very much puzzled, fol- 
lowed her into the room. 

Daisy was still standing by the wdndow, and the dark, 
damask curtain, which she had drawn down before his 
entrance, tlirew a deeper shadow of the gloomy day over 
her face. 

Without stirring from her position, she spoke to him, 
and her voice was low, and slightly unsteady : 

“ Your name is John Goldman, is it not?” she asked. 

“Yes, ma’am,” John answered, gazing earnestly into 
her face, with a troubled look coming into his own, be- 
cause of the painful memory she awakened of his lost 
friend, Daisy. 

But no suspicion of her identity crossed his mind— for 
what possible connectiojn, save that made by a chance re- 
semblance, could there be between the wealthy and couHed 
Madame Astraea, and the poor, friendless waif he had 
picked up on the roadside a year and a half before? he 
thought with a sigh. 

She came out from the shadow of the window where 
she had been standing, and extended her hand, glittering 
with jewels, to him in greeting, and as he touched it 
timidly, she said, motioning him to a seat opposite the one 
she herself took : 

“You are wondering what I want with you, Mr. Gold- 
man. Well, I will tell you. I once knew a poor, unfort- 
unate girl whom you befriended in a time of teiTible need. 
You picked her up where she had fallen from exhaustion 
on the roadside, and took her to your own home, where 


iOO DAISV l)AMnELLi 

you and your mother cared for her— until she waS able to 
care for herself.” 

John could contain himself no longer. He sprung up 
from his seat and went and bent over Madame Astrsea, 
asking eagerly : 

“You mean Daisy. Where is she?” 

Madame Astrsea shook her head, and the lids drooped 
over her eyes, in which the red firelight had been showing 
a sort of mist. 

“ She is dead,” she said, and her voice was chillingly 
hard. “The young person whom you knew is no more. 
But she was warm-hearted and grateful for your kindness, 
and I promised her, that if ever it came into my power to 
do you a favor, I would do it in her name, and would beg 
you to accept it for her sake,” 

John had returned to his seat, and his head was bent and 
the shine of the fire fell on two tears that rolled slowly 
down his cheeks, and dropped from the ends of his tawny 
mustache. 

He was not looking at Madame Astraea, and she was not 
looking at him; and as he kept silence she continued 
speaking: 

“Is your mother still alive, Mr. Goldman?” 

“ Yes, ma’am,” John answered, lifting his hand to brush 
the mist from his eyes with the back of it. “ Mother is in 
good health, and strong for an old lady.” 

“Daisy was under the impression that the place you 
lived at when she was with you was not yours, I think.” 

“No, ma’am,” John answered, with the simple dignity 
which marked his every word and acf. “We are poor 
people, we never owned a foot of ground in our lives, and 
my father before me never did, but we never owed a debt ; 
we have managed, mother and I, to scuffle along and live 
and keep clear of debt.” 

He made the assertion with proud humility, and Madame 
Astraea listened to him with respectful interest. When he 
ended she said : 

“ I sent for you to make a proposition to you, and remem- 
ber, whether you accept or reject it, that you owe me no 
obligation, no thanks, I am acting only for Daisy, the poor 
unfortunate whom you and your mother befriended, and 
who is no more. I have purchased a farm on the Hudson, 
where I expect to spend a few weeks during the summer, 
but which I do not propose to take any control over. The 
farm is well stocked ; the house completely furnished. If 
you and your mother will take charge of that farm, I will 
ask you no rent, and whatever the profits of the place may 
be. they shall be wholly, unquestioningly yours and your 
mother’s. It is only a few hours’ travel down the river : it 


DAISY DARRELL, 


101 


is called Silver View. You can p:o and see it if you like, 
any day, and if you are willing to accept the proposition, 
which is made wholly for Daisy’s sake, remember, I shall 
he very glad. No, no, don’t thank me, please, I am only 
paying a debt for Daisy.” 

In his astonishment and gratitude he had arisen to his 
feet, and was uttering some incoherent acknowledgments 
of her kindness, when she waved him away, and turning 
to the seamstress, who had resumed her sewing, she said : 

“Miss Woodruff, go down to the conservatory with Mr. 
Goldman, please, and gather a basket of flowers for his 
mother. I)aisy said she was fond of them.” 

The young girl arose, and John, fully Understanding 
that he was dismissed by his beautiful and mysterious 
patroness, bowed awkwardly, and followed his conductress 
into the conservatory. 

He spent a very pleasant half hour there among the 
flowers, in company with Maggie Woodruff, whose spirits 
were generally as high as the color of her hair — which was 
a vivid red— and whose wit was as bright and piercing as 
her blue eyes. 

She was so prettily saucy, yet withal so gentle and sen- 
sible and kind of heart, that somehow or other John felt 
happier than he had done for many and many a day, and 
realized that life was very sweet, even though he might 
not be permitted to share it with Daisy. 

While he was watching Maggie Woodruff’s plump fingers 
arranging the flowers in the basket for his mother, Madame 
Astraea, in her own beautiful room, was arraying herself 
for the evening. 

How exquisitely fair she was in the ruby-colored velvet 
which so perfectly fitted her faultless figure, and with her 
garnet jewels flashing like drops of blood in the gas- 
light ! 

As she stood alone, surveying herself in the mirror, a 
look that was not pleasant to see, and which marred its 
wonderful loveliness, came into her face. 

“ I am determined that he shall feel, pang for pang, all 
the suffering he has caused me I” she muttered between her 
pearly teeth, thinking of Clifford Bancroft. 

Three hours afterward she was at the opera — at the very 
same house in which sho had first been led to suspect his 
duplicity. 

She was in her private box, and Clifford Bancroft was 
with her. 

She and he were the cynosure of many eyes, but he, at 
least, had eyes only for her. 

The spell of her power over him was deepening moment 
by moment, and he was her slave. 


103 


DAISY DAHnELD 


As for her, her eyes were sparkling, and her cheeks were 
flushed with the consciousness of her victory. 

She seemed to have eyes and ears for him only ; so she 
did not see, any more than he did, that his wife, from a 
box in a different part of the hall, was watching them 
feverishly. 

He had no idea that Geraldine intended to attend the 
opera that night, or he might not, even in the reckless 
mood that was over him, have felt quite as much at his 
ease as he did. 

On leaving her three hours before, he had told her that 
an engagement which he could not break, called him away, 
and he had left her without explaining the nature of that 
engagement. 

After he left, some lady friends had dropped in to see 
her on their way to the opera, and had prevailed on her to 
accompany them. So she had gone without dreaming 
that she should see her husband there, and the sight of 
him in company with the “Beautiful Mystery” was such 
a shock to her as only a madly jealous woman can under- 
stand. 

“ There is your husband with the fascinating Madame 
Astraea,” giddy Bessie Vale whispered to her, nodding her 
pretty head toward the box w'here the two were sitting. 
“ I cautioned you at the ball last night to lake care how 
you trusted him in the circle of her power. She is a siren, 
and no mistake.” 

Geraldine only tossed her proud head disdainfully, and 
smiled. 

“ I do not fear her!” she said. 

But in her heart she knew that she had spoken falsely, 
and that she did fear her— and that she hated her also, 
with a burning hate. 

To herself she said : 

“If she comes between him and me, they shall both repent 
it 1 As surely as she does it, I will do something des- 
perate!” 

What that “ something ” would be she never intimated 
even to herself. She only felt that she was capable of 
carrying out the vow she made to herself there, and re- 
peated again, hours afterAvard in her own room: 

“ If she comes between him and me they shall both re- 
gret it, even if I bring destruction down on my own head 
in taking vengeance on them 

Between Geraldine and Clifford the name of Madame 
Astrsea was never mentioned, but she was constantly and 
torturingly present in the mind of each. 

Clifford made no struggle against her power, no effort to 


iyAlSY DAERELL. 103 

free himself ffoni the fatal charm of her beauty. Reck- 
lessly he gave himself up to it, and lived only for her. 

The unbroken silence which Geraldine maintained on the 
subject might have been likened to the deceiving white 
heat of iron, or to the ominous calm that precedes a tem- 
pest; for the maddening jealousy within her was gathering 
power day by day. 

Madame Astraea was to Clifford Bancroft a sort of brill- 
iant star, beautiful, glittering— but far, so far beyond his 
reach. 

When he would have declared the love that was con- 
suming his life, as it were, one glance of her blue eyes was 
sufficient to arrest the torrent of words on his tongue. 

He, too, was madly jealous. She was an idol with men. 
A score of the most brilliant “ catches ” in New York vied 
for the possession of her hand, and would have groveled in 
the dust at her dainty feet for but one smile from those red 
lips. And the smile came, but it was for all — no one in 

E articular could have been pronounced the favorite with 
er. 

All this drove Clifford Bancroft wild with jealousy, and 
rage. It was even to himself an unaccountable feeling, but 
he entertained a strong sense of proprietorship in her. 

The queer and most inexplicable idea that she belonged 
to him grew stronger and stronger with him every day. 
He no longer, even vaguely, associated her with Daisy — he 
never thought of comparing her with any one. She was 
peerless. 

Of Daisy, his pretty, hoydenish child wife, he never 
thought at all during those feverish days. 

What Madame Astreea thought of him he did not know; 
he only knew that she held him silent when he would have 
spoken of his passion— quelled the rising torrent of words 
by a quick glance of her blue eyes which he could no more 
refuse to obey than he could have stifi«=-d that love in his 
heart. He had become a subject of gossip because of his 
blind worship of the fascinating widow, and these mali- 
cious remarks were constantly reaching the ears of Geral- 
dine, and were making a fury of her. 

One morning Clifford Bancroft called as usual at the 
home of Madame Astrsea, and was told that she had left 
an hour before for Silver View, her country residence 
on the Hudson, and that she had been escorted by Colonel 
Devere. 

In an instant his unreasoning rage and jealousy flamed 
up. 

What right had she to put herself under the protection of 
Colonel Devere? 

It was that singular feeling of proprietorship in her 


104 “ 


DAISY DAEDDLU 


which caused the sense of personal injury the knowledge 
of her departure with the military beau awoke within 
him. 

He must see her; he must come to an understanding 
with her. He would go to Silver View; he would speak 
and she should listen ! 

He and Geraldine still lived with his uncle, Dr. Burnie, 
and there had never been any outspoken division between 
them; only that silently widening gulf separated them, 
and they never mentioned it to each other. 

The evening of the day on which Madame Astrsea had 
gone to Silver View— and which was early in April— he 
Said to Geraldine, encountering her in the hall of their 
home : 

“I am going away for a few days on a fishing excursion. 
Good-bye.” 

He passed on out of the house, and took passage on a 
steamer for Silver View — or rather for the village of Riv- 
erton, which was in its immediate vicinity. 

Bad news seems to travel on the wind, it makes such 
haste to reach the ears that it falls heaviest on. So in less 
than twenty-four hours Geraldine knew that Clifford had 
gone to Madame Astrsea. 

Her face grew very white when she heard it, and she 
clutched her heart as if she were smothering, and she 
gasped for breath ; and her maid, who had given her the 
information, brought her a glass of Avater, being thor- 
oughly frightened at the effect her gossip had on her 
mistress. 

“Mary,” Geraldine said sternly, while her great dusky 
eyes glowed like live coals, ‘ ‘ make preparations to go to 
Riverton with me this evening. I will follow my husband, 
and before morning he and his lady-love will learn that I 
won’t submit tamely any longer to insult and injury I” 


CHAPTER XXVI. 

“she deserved no pity prom me!” 

Fate or Chance, whichever it may be, seems often to 
copibine with some wicked human force to bring about an 
evil result. 

It appeared to do so in the case of Geraldine, who, mad 
with jealousy, and feeling herself disregarded and her 
rights trampled upon by her husband and his enchantress, 
had gone to Riverton with some dire purpose in her mind. 
It was near sunset when she arrived there, and she took up 
her abode at the village hotel. 

Had her husband engaged board at the same house? she 
wondered. , , , . 


DAISY DARRELL, 


105 


She sent for the clerk, and inquired of him ; 

“ Is there a gentleman by the name of Bancroft stopping 
here ?” 

The man nodded. 

“ He engaged a room here yesterday evening, but he 
spends most of his time at Silver View. He seems to be a 
particular friend of Madame Astrsea’s, who lives there.” 

“ That is all I wished to know,” Geraldine said curtly, 
and the clerk nodded to her and retired. 

But in one respect he had misled his lodger, for Clifford 
Bancroft was not at that hour in company with Madame 
Astrgea. 

He was, instead, five miles distant from her on a fishing 
excursion with Colonel Devere. 

It is true that Madame Astrsea was to have been in the 
party, but she excused herself from joining them at noon 
on the plea of a severe headache, and much against the 
will of Clifford Bancroft, at least, the gentlemen departed 
without her. 

With a feeling of unrest over her which forbade her re- 
maining in the house, Geraldine wandered alone on the 
margin of the river. 

Like a great ball of fire, the sun was sliding down the 
sky, and the passing wind struck damply on her face, as if 
its wings were moist with the rising storm which was al- 
ready blotting the redness from the sky. 

Low mutterings of thunder came now and then to her 
ears, as she wandered on and on beside the leaden-hued 
river. 

Suddenly the ominous silence was broken by the clatter 
of a horse’s feet, and in another instant the animal ap- 
peared in sight, bearing a graceful and beautiful rider. 

At the same moment a startling peal of thunder broke 
from the sky, and a flash of zigzag lightning that looked 
like a fiery serpent seemed suddenly to dart from the sky, 
and played between Geraldine and the horse, which was 
very near her. 

It was so vivid that both she and the animal were fright- 

^^Geraldiiie flung up her arms, uttered a sharp shriek, and 
the mettled horse reared and plunged. 

With wide eyes, she saw him spring to one side of the 
road, and then— , , 

She saw him tumble over the embankment, and both 
he and his rider fell into the water ten feet below. 

At that moment she recognized the rider. 

It was her rival, Madame Astraea ! 

Her first impulse had been to fly to the village for help 
to succor the unfortunate lady from death, if possible, 


106 


DAISY DARRELL, 


But that had been before she recognized the imperiled 
person ; when she did so, the impulse of humanity left her. 

For one horrible minute she stood on the embankment, 
looking down on the beautiful form that was struggling 
with the plunging steed in the water. 

“ What pity for her— she has murdered my happiness!” 
she muttered with stiff, colorless lips. 

Then she turned and ran back to the hotel, with the 
thunder roaring, and the lightning flashing over her, and 
with the rain, which began to fall in a deluge, pelting her 
unmercifully. 

White and trembling she went up to her room, where 
Mary, her maid, exchanged her dripping garments for dry 
ones. 

The girl attributed her disturbed condition wholly to the 
excitement and terror of being caught in the dreadful 
storm that was fairly bombarding the house, and her mis- 
tress did not undeceive her. 

“ Bring me a cup of strong coffee,” Geraldine com- 
manded her, as she threw herself, white and shivering still, 
on the bed. “ And then leave me alone — I am not well.” 

The maid did as she was bidden, and then left Geraldine 
alone, with the stormy darkness deepening around her. 

A great horror was over her— she constantly saw before 
her that steed and its rider plunging over the embank- 
ment into the river. She constantly saw the graceful 
figure, and the white, terrified face of that unfortunate 
rider struggling in the water. 

And she felt as if she were a murderess ! 

She knew that her own involuntary gesture and shriek 
had added to the madness of the animal, and had partly 
caused him to take that fatal plunge I 

And she had made no effort to undo the mischief she had 
helped to bring about ! 

She had left her rival to die! 

Notwithstanding the great horror that was over her, 
there was also a feeling of fierce exultation that vengeance 
had overtaken the woman who had come between her and 
her husband, and had taken his heart ftom her! 

“ She deserved no pity from me!” she muttered over and 
over again through that long, tempestuous night. “ ‘ An 
eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.’ It is Bible law !” 

So she sought to salve her conscience with that stern 
Mosaic creed ; but for all that remorse was at work within 
her, and when the day came it found her looking like the 
pallid ghost of herself. 

She could not bear to remain there, and so she left in 
the early morning, taking the first steamer that touched 
^t the village landing foi- New York City. 


daisy dadreld 


107 


But by the time she arrived there, she was ill almost 
unto death, and in that condition she was taken to her 
home, and a messenger was dispatched for her husband, 
who was known to be at Riverton. 

Clifford Bancroft was almost as colorless as his wife. 
He seemed unfeeling, too, inasmuch as he did not manifest 
any anxiety touching Geraldine’s condition. 

“He never did love her, poor lady,” Mary, the maid, 
declared to her betrothed, the coachman, dashing the 
angry tears from her eyes. “ It’s my opinion that it’s just 
his neglect of her that is killing her, poor creature.” 

The girl had spoken truly. Clifford Bancroft did not love, 
and never had loved, Geraldine, and he was vexed rather 
than sympathetic at the illness, because he was tortured 
with anxiety at the mysterious disappearance of Madame 
Astraea two days before, and he would much rather have 
lingered in the neighborhood of Silver View, and waited 
for news of her fate, than to be watching beside the 
sick-bed of the woman who called him her husband. 

The physician in attendance on Geraldine had said to 
him: 

“ She has disease of the heart. Be careful to giiard her 
against any sudden shock— as it might prove instantly 
fatal.” 

Clifford Bancroft tried hard to do his duty by her— that 
is, so far as remaining near her was concerned — for he had 
not left her side unnecessarily a moment since his arrival 
early that morning, and now the shadows of the night 
were falling darkly. 

Mary came in and lighted the gas, and when she had 
done so, she handed a card to Clifford, saving: 

“ I told the gentleman of Miss Geraldine’s illness, and 
that you were staying with her, but he says he is bound to 
see you on important business. He is waiting for you in 
the library.” 

Clifford glanced at the card, and as he did so his face 
grew deathly pale with a presentiment of coming trouble. 

The name traced boldly on it was : ‘ ‘ Reverend George 
Crawford.” 

He crumpled the ominous bit of pasteboard in his hand, 
and without uttering a word he went from the room, and 
descended the old-fashioned stairway and entered the 
library. 

A slender, stoop-shouldered man dressed in black, arose 
and turned his dark, bright eyes penetratingly on Clifford’s 
face, and, as it was fully revealed by the gas-light, the 
young man saw the same countenance, with its look of in- 
ward peace, which had shone upon him and Pais^ in tho 


108 DAISY DARRELL. 

gray of that dawn when they had been pronounced man 
and wife. 

“My Bon,” Mr. Crawford said, shaking hands kindly 
with him, “ I came to you because of a letter I received 
just before my departure for the United States. It was 
written on the twenty-fourth of September, one year ago, 
and was almost twelve months in reaching me. It was 
written by Daisy Darrell, the woman to whom God permit- 
ted me to unite you in marriage on the tenth of June a 
year ago, and who was alive at the time of your second 
marriage, because her letter to me was written on the very 
day of that marriage, and after it had taken place. My 
son, a great wrong has been done — a wrong against God — 
against your lawful wife and against the laws of the land. 
This letter charges against you the crime of bigamy. It 
was written by the hand of your true wife, who was Miss 
Daisy Darrell, and who, if she is yet living, is still your 
true wife !” 

“But she is not alive. She was dead before my last 
marriage. I, myself, saw her buried !” Clifford exclaimed, 
sinking down on a chair and staring amazedly. 

Mr. Crawford placed the letter in his hand. 

“ You are familiar with her handwriting, I presume,” he 
said. “ Examine that and see if it is genuine.” 

Clifford looked down at the open paper, and great drops 
broke out on his face. “ Yes, it is surely hers,” he gasped, 
“ My God, what a tangle!” 


CHAPTER XXVII. 

“if she is alive, she is your wipe!” 

Staring down in a dazed way at the paper, Clifford Ban- 
croft mechanically read the accusing lines written in the 
clear, round, school-girl-like hand, which he would have 
sworn was that of his child-wife Daisy. 

This is how the lines ran : 

“New York City, September 24, 18 — . 

Reverend George Crawford: 

“Dear Sir, — You remember, do you not, having mar- 
ried a couple — by name Clifford Bancroft and Daisy Dar- 
rell — at about half- past four o’clock on the morning of the 
tenth of June, in this year? It was a secret marriage, and 
Clifford Bancroft has taken advantage of my helplessness 
because of having no proof, and has married another wom- 
an this day With my owm eyes I saw him married to 
my cousin, Geraldine Fitzgerald, and I had no power to 
prevent it, because I had no proof that he was already 
married to me, I write to you for that proof. Send me 


DAISY DARRSLL. 109 

at No. 4 B — - Street, if you please, a certificate of my mar- 
riage, that I may claim my rights. 

“ Eespectfully, 

“Daisy Darrell Bancroft.” 

^ Mr. Crawford had taken a seat, and he waited until 
Clifford read the letter, with his bright eyes fixed on the 
young man’s beaded face. 

“I did not answer thatcommunication,”he said, “because 
I was just on the eve of returning home, and I determined 
to attend to the matter the very first thing on arriving in 
New York. I did go immediately to the address mentioned 
there, which I found was a disreputable place kept by 
one Dan Devenant; who seemed, however, to be a good- 
hearted person, and he told me that he had found the 
young woman exhausted and fainting with hunger on the 
street one day, and had taken her into his house, and had 
cared, respectfully, for her until she recovered sufficiently 
to leave. That she had asked permission to have a letter 
addressed to that place, and had, from time to time, sent 
messengers to him to inquire if any letter had come for 
her: but that none had ever come. He had lost sight of 
her, he said, but he recollected that she had asked him to 
direct her to Gray Street, and that he had done so when 
he parted with her the only time he ever saw her. So, 
having lost trace of her, I come to you, and demand in 
the name of the Master I serve, that if you have injured 
that poor girl, you shall make whatever reparation lies in 
your power.” 

He had spoken kindly, hut with undeniable earnestness, 
and with his long forefinger warningly uplifted, and Clif- 
ford Bancroft saw him as one sees a vision. 

The paper fell from his unsteady fingers to the floor, and 
he raised his hand and drew it across his clammy fore- 
head. 

What did it all mean? Had there been some terrible 
mistake when that drowned body had been taken from the 
Morgue and buried as “ Daisy?” 

Dan Devenant told Mr. Crawford that she had gone to 
Gray Street. 

To Gray Street ! That very house in which they were 
sitting was on Gray Street, No. 247 ! 

A startling memory rusbed over him. 

He recollected the woman he had met in the lane on the 
night of his arrival thei e with Geraldine, the woman who 
had startled him so much by her resemblance to Daisy that 
he almost believed it had been Daisy’s ghost. 

The hoarse words she had spoken came back to him : 

“It would be well if I were a ghost, Clifford Bancroft I 


110 


DAISY DARRELt. 


It would be better for you to kill me now, and so make a 
ghost of me, than to let me live on for the revenge I am 
sure to take !” 

He had taken her for an escaped lunatic at the time, but 
he knew better now. 

It was Daisy, alive, and mad with the consciousness of 
injury ! 

All these ideas had rushed through his mind with the 
swiftness and vividness of lightning. 

“I believed her to be dead — I did— before God,” he said 
so earnestly that Mr, Crawford was convinced of bis sin- 
cerity, and pitied him from the very bottom of his gentle 
heart. 

“I can find no trace of her,” he said, “ and she may be 
dead, but that fact must be ascertained. If she is alive, 
she is your wife, and any other woman believing herself 
to be such is laboring under a cruel mistake.” 

Clifford shrank as if a blow had been dealt him. 

“It is terrible!” he muttered, drawing his breath shiver- 
ingly through his teeth, remembering Geraldine’s towering 
pride, and the horrible fall that knowledge would bring 
to it. 

“ Yes, something must be done,” he said. “ I have un- 
wittingly wronged two women instead of one. I can only 
make reparation to one.” 

He shivered convulsively, realizing that if Daisy were 
alive Geraldine had better, oh, far better, be dead ! 

Mr. Crawford clasped one of Clifford’s cold bands in his, 
and placed the other kindly on his shoulder. 

“My son, I believe that you have not willingly and wilb 
fully wronged any one. Put the whole troublesome mat- 
ter in the hands of God; keep up a biave heart, resolving 
to do your duty when you see it, and the tangled skein 
will be straightened for you.” 

He pressed the young man’s hand, and as he parted 
from him, he said : 

“ Do your duty.” 

Clifford answered sternly : 

“ I will!” 

At that moment, he would have been glad to feel that it 
was his duty to take his own life, and so put an end to the 
whole dreadful worry. 

But no idea of that kind crossed his mind, and he would 
not have tolerated it an instant if it had, for he was young 
and life was very sweet to him. 

He could not meet Geraldine yet — he shivered at the 
thought of seeing her — knowing what he did, and how that 
knowledge must bow her proud head with shame. No, he 
could not see her ; so, when he parted with Mr. Crawford 


DAISY DAnHELL 111 

he went out in the yard, and wandered about under the 
irees that lifted their aged forms like giants in the April 
moonlight. 

In her weak, nervous state Geraldine could not endure 
his absence. Siie wanted him constantly with her; the 
more insecure she felt her hold on his heart to be, the more 
she clung to him. 

“ Mary, has that visitor gone?” she asked feverishly. 

“I don’t know, Miss Geraldine,” the girl responded 
soothingly. “ I will go and see.” 

“ Do,” the invalid said, “and send Mr. Bancroft to me.” 

Mary found the library deserted, and as she glanced 
around the room, her eye caught sight of the letter Clifford 
had dropped on the floor — the letter Daisy had written to 
Mr. Crawford. 

Mary’s education had been sadly neglected. She could 
not read writing, therefore all manuscripts that fell under 
her notice had a strong fascination for her, so she picked 
the letter up from the floor, and after turning it about in 
her hands, she muttered : 

“I’ll jest take it up to Miss Geraldine. It will satisfy 
her, and keep her quiet, may be, until Mr. Bancroft comes 
in.” 

With that muttered determination she went out of the 
library and ascended to the room of her mistress. 

“The gentleman is gone, and Mr. Bancroft has just 
stepped out somewhere,” she said glibly, “but here’s a let- 
ter 1 found lying on the floor, and I thought may be you 
would like to read it.” 

Geraldine took it with a petulent exclamation, and 
began to read it. 

Clifford Bancroft, wandering about under the trees, heard 
a loud shriek proceeding evidently from Geraldine’s room, 
under the open window of which he chanced to be passing. 

He rushed into the house, mounted the stairs, and 
entered the room, to find Geraldine lying white ’and still 
on the bed, with the fatal letter in her dead hand. 


CHAPTER XXVIII. 

“GO AFTER CLIFFORD BANCROFT! BRING HIM HERE!” 

Maggie Woodruff, Madame Astrsea's seamstress, was 
Dan Devenant’s half-sister, and this is how she happened 
to have a place in the house of the “ Beautiful Mystery.” 

Shortly after she had become domiciled in her palatial 
residence in New York, Madame Astraeawas driving down 
B Street, and Dan Devenant was standing before the door 
of bis decidedly disreputable abode. 

Much to the astonishment of her liveried driver, Ma- 


115 


DAISY DARRELL. 


dame Astraea pulled the check-string and beckoned to Dart 
Devenant to come to her; which he did, looking quite as 
much puzzled as did her attendants. 

He had no recollection of ever having looked on that 
exquisite face before, and he was surprised at the question 
she addressed to him: 

“ I had a friend once, sir, whom you obliged ; and for her 
sake — you have no recollection of her, I know, and it 
would be useless to mention her name— but for her sake I 
am willing to do you a favor if I can. I am rich, and I 
want some good, virtuous young girl for a seamstress and 
companion, and if you have any relative whom you would 
like to see in that position, and who would suit me, I 
would employ her, because you once did a service which I 
need not, and will not, mention, to a friend of mine.'’ 

Dan Devenant was a man of business, and he grasped at 
the idea and immediately mentioned the name of his half- 
sister, Maggie Woodruff, whom he assured Madame Astrsea 
was a good country girl, who knew nothing of the evils of 
city life, and whom he would be glad to have kept in such 
ignorance, but who could not, considering her straitened 
circumstances, afford to refuse a g^dd position, when it 
was offered her, to make her own living. 

So Maggie was sent for, and gave great satisfaction to 
her beautiful patroness. 

it was she who had told Madame Astrsea of Silver View 
—a country seat which was for sale, and which was sit- 
uated only a few miles from the little cottage on the banks 
of the Hudson River where Maggie lived with her widowed 
mother, at such times as she was not “living out” for 
wages. 

Early in April Madame Astrsea went up to Silver 
View with the avowed purpose of spending several weeks 
with Mrs, Goldman and her son John, who had gladly ac- 
cepted Madame Astrsea’s generous offer made to John in 
January. 

Maggie had asked and obtained permission to visit her 
mother, whose cottage was only a few miles distant, and 
who was confined to the house by an attack of rheuma- 
tism. 

There were times when Dan Devenant— who to an other- 
wise black character, coupled an exceeding kindness of 
heart, and a tender regard for his pious mother and his 
innocent half-sister — would weary of his life of reckless- 
ness, and would go up to the quiet little home on the 
bank of the Hudson, and for a few’ days would bask in the 
pure atmosphere of that humble home and he was always 
sure of a cordial welcome. 

On the morning of the day on which Madame Astrsea’s 


DAISY DARRELL. 


113 


horse had been so frightened by the storm and by Geraldine 
as to plunge over the embankment with his beautiful mis- 
tress, Dan had appeared unexpectedly at the Woodruff 
cottage and had passed a sweet, quiet day— a day of 
blessed relaxation to him — with his mother and Maggie. 

All day long it had been intensely warm, and late in the 
evening Dan had unmoored Maggie’s little boat, and had 
gone rowing over the still river. 

He saw that a storm was coming, but he did not fear it ; 
there was nothing on earth that Dan Devenant did fear, so 
he paid no attention to it, but kept rowing idly up the 
river until the thunder roared, and the lightning flashed 
ominously ovei him. 

The placid river w^as ruffled by the rising wind and the 
current bore the light boat in which he was seated irre- 
sistibly along, as though it had been a straw. 

Dan Devenant, who had from his very boyhood set him- 
self in defiance against whatever opposed him, rather 
enjoyed this war of wind and water, although he was 
rocked between the two in his little boat as if he had been 
in a cradle, and the clouds poured their floods fiercely down 
upon him. 

He rested carelessly on his oars, and was driven down 
the current, and as he glanced over the disturbed water, 
he caught sight of a'drowned horse that was being whirled 
by the eddies and beaten by the waves that broke upon the 
rock against which it had lodged. 

A dead horse was not worth a second glance, and would 
not have gotten it from Dan Devenant’s bold eyes had it not 
been that something attached to the corpse of the quadru- 
ped attracted him. 

He caught up his oars and he bent to them, and he proved 
that he needed but the will to defy the strength of the cur- 
rent. 

With the muscles standing out on his arms and the 
drops on his face, he turned the course of his boat, and it 
swam like a storm-bird toward the drowned animal. 

Dan Devenant understood the situation at a glance. A 
horse and his rider had been plunged into the water, but 
they had not been separated. 

The rider’s foot had been caught in the stirrup, and so 
they had floated down the stream together, the lady and 
her dead steed— for the horse was dead— his neck had 
somehow been broken in the fall. 

Was his mistress also a corpse? She seemed to be, for 
as Dan released her foot from the stirrup and drew her 
into his boat, she lay where he placed her, white and still 
and cold, wjtb ber dripping garments clinging to ber 


114 DAISY DARRELL, 

graceful figure, and with the rain beating pitilessly down 
upon her. 

“ If she is dead it is a pity, a great pity, for I never saw 
but one woman who was as beautiful,” Dan Devenant 
muttered. 

Something in the words of his soliloquy assisted his 
memory, evidently, for he suddenly bent over and peered 
into the exquisite face, and he exclaimed, with sharp pain 
in his voice : 

“ By Jove, it is her— it is Madame Astroea!” 

Then, more sturdily if possible than before, he bent to 
the oars, and through fiaming lightning, flooding rain, and 
and seething water he made his way homeward. 

“Oh, my son, is that a drowned woman?” his mother 
exclaimed, as he burst into the room where she and Maggie 
were sitting and waiting for Dan to return to partake of 
the supper which was smoking on the hearth of the old- 
fashioned fireplace. 

“I am afraid so, mother,” Dan responded, gently plac- 
ing his dripping burden cn the carpet before the blazing 
log fire which had been kindled for the purpose of prepar- 
ing supper. 

Maggie bent over the prostrate figure, and then started 
back, uttering a distressed cry : 

“Oh, it’s Madame Astrsea ! How. on earth did it hap- 
pen?” 

“ Her foot was caught in the stirrup of her saddle, and 
her horse was dead,” Dan responded, busying himself 
about the unconscious figure. “ If there is any life left in 
her let us try to restore her,” he added, impatiently, and 
Maggie and his mother throwing off the spell of horror 
that bound them, set to work to coax into a blaze the spark 
of life which might yet be unextinguished. 

' But was there a spark, however feeble, still burning there 
in that white, cold body, that more nearly resembled a 
beautiful statue than a human being ? 

It seemed only “ hoping against hope ” to encourage such 
a belief, but still they did encourage it. 

It seemed monstrous to give her up to death — she so 
young— so beautiful— so good, for at that moment they ex- 
aggerated her goodness, and they deified her, being dead. 

For hours they worked with her; they strove to drag 
back and imprison in its fair casket again the soul that 
seemed already to have crossed that mystical boundary 
which can never be recrossed. 

And all the time the thunder roared, the lightning 
flashed over the little house, and the rain beat and beat 
upon it. 

It would be daring Providence, indeed, to venturo out 


DAISY DARRELL. 


115 


now upon the water which they heard roaring and plung- 
ing outside, especially in such a craft as tliat of Maggie 
Woodruff’s, and there was no other mode of reaching a 
physician. 

So they were compelled to trust to their own skill, and 
after awhile the result of their efforts manifested itself. 

“ Her lips moved ! Her lips moved! I saw it distinct- 
ly!” Maggie suddenly exclaimed, grasping her brother’s 
arm, and Dan could have shouted when he saw that she 
had spoken truly, and that the feeble spark of life was 
kindling into a flame. 

They watched beside her all that stormy night, and when 
the morning came the blood was coursing riotously 
through her veins, and her mind ran riot also— for, for 
some reason, either because of the shock she had received, 
or from some other cause, she was delirious. 

In the excitement that was over him when he landed the 
night before, Dan had forgotten to secure the boat, and, 
as the Avater had risen between the widow's cottage and 
Riverton, it was impossible for him to go for a physician 
until the flood subsided sufiiciently to permit him to walk, 
which would be at least thirty-six hours. So there was no 
alternative but to trust to their own skill in caring for the 
guest. 

Her delirium took to them an inexplicable form. She 
was constantly pleading with some one — whose name she 
never mentioned — not to forsake her. And often she 
Avould turn to Dan Devenant and cry out piteously: 
“ Bring him to me! Bring him to me!” 

“I wish I knew whom she means,” Dan said, shaking bis 
black hair, “ and I would bring him to her, if he is 1 3 be 
found, as soon as the water falls enough for me to go for 
the doctor.” 

“That Avill be by to-morrow morning at le^test,” Maggie 
said, “ and by that time I will And out, if I can, whom it is 
she wants to see.” 

Til at night she did find out. She had artfully coaxed 
the delirious woman to tell her the name of the person she 
wanted to see, and in the gray dawn of the next day she 
said to her brother as he was about to set out to Riverton 
for the physician: “Dan, send Dr. E.ronly down, and then 
you go on after Mr. Clifford Bancroft. Bring him here ! 
It is he whom Madame Astrsea Avants to see.” 

Dan Devenant’s ejres opened wide Avith surprise, but he 
nodded his head with its straggling locks of black hair 
and said emphatically: “If it is Clifford Bancroft she 
wants to see, he shall come here if I have to drag him.” 

“ You won’t have to do that ; hell be willing to come,” 
Maggie responded, with a knowing dip of her bright head. 


116 


DAISY DAUBELL. 


CHAPTER XXIX. 

“the message is from MADAME ASTR^A— SHE WANTS TO 
SEE YOU I” 

“ I OUGHT to have sent a note by Dan to Mrs. Goldman,” 
Maggie ruminated with a bright flush on her round face 
after her brother’s departure. ‘ ‘ They will be very uneasy, 
for I have no idea that they suspect what has become of 
Madame Astraea. As soon as the doctor comes, I’ll go to 
Riverton and borrow Tom Wayts’ boat and row up to Sil- 
ver View myself and tell them!” 

The resolve set her heart to fluttering in a way that 
would have been inexplicable if no one was living at Silver 
View but old Mrs. Goldman. Yet it were not hard to com. 
prehend when the presence of Mrs. Goldman’s son John 
was taken into account. 

Maggie and John had been thrown a good deal together 
through the agency of Madame Astrsea, but neither of 
them suspected any design on the part of that lady to 
interest them in each other, and had never acknowledged, 
even to their own secret souls, that such a state of affairs 
had come to exist between them. 

Yet such a state of affairs had come to exist between 
them, and Madame Astraea knew it and exulted in it. It 
was a consummation she had most devoutly wished for. 

So Maggie, with a delicious thrill at the heart, set out on 
her self-imposed mission. 

She borrowed the boat from Tom Wayts, and seated in 
it, she was skimming lightly up the river, when she met 
John Goldman pulling his own boat down stream. 

His honest face brightened at the sight of her, and he 
called to tier to attract her attention, for he really believed 
she had not seen him — she was about to pass him by as if 
she had not. 

She blushed more rosily than ever, and nodded and 
smiled to him when he called her attention, and with a 
few strokes of his oar he brought his boat alongside of 
hers. 

“I was just going to see you,” John said, and Maggie 
laughed and retorted saucily : 

“ And I was just going to see you— so we are both of the 
same mind, it seems.” 

“Well, then, Maggie,” John said softly, reaching out 
his hand to grasp ^hesideof her boat, “let us go in the 
same boat — mine is the strongest — so come you into mine — 
and we’ll take the other in tow.” 

There was nothing in his words to blush at, but Maggie 


117 


jyAisy daruj^ll. 

did blush — perhaps at his tone of voice, or, perhaps, at the 
allegorical iiieaiiing she might have detected; but never- 
theless, she arose readily, and sprung lightly into his 
stronger boat, and as they went side by side down the 
river, she told him of what had befallen Madame Astraea, 
and found that he and his mother had indeed been very 
uneasy because of her mysterious disappearance. 

“She’s a grand woman, Maggie,” John said, with his blue 
eyes glistening. “ Just think of all that she has done for 
mother and me, only because I was not bri^te enough to 
leave a poor girl lying on tlie roadside where slie had fallen 
in a faint. Madame Astrsea, for all she is so grand and 
Daisy was so humble, always reminds me of her, and that’s 
why I feel such a sort of reverence for her, I think. I never 
told you about it, Maggie, but I loved poor little Daisy— 
she was the only woman 1 ever loved except you.” 

There — it was out — and he had not meant to tell it— and 
he was blushing redly over it, and so was Maggie. 

“Suppose we go in the same boat through life, dear,” 
John said, stealing his arm around her waist — and Maggie 
said nothing, but he took her silence for consent, and he 
drew her head down on his breast and kissed her. And he 
did not care to have her tell him that she agreed to his 
proposition, and that she would go in the same boat with 
him through life, for he felt confident that she would do 
it — and ri ht here tet us remark that he was not dis- 
appointed in the expectation— for she did. 

While John and Maggie were making this important ar- 
rangement for their future lives, Dan Devenant, having 
sent the physician down to to his mother’s cottage, was on 
his way to find Clifford Bancroft. 

He knew that he lived at number 247 Gray Street, and 
he made his way there. 

He passed up the long avenue, and lifted his hand to ring 
the bell, but he did not do it, for he noticed that pendants 
of black crape were streaming from the knob. 

Dan Devenant stood irresolutely on the steps. He shrank 
from intruding into what he discovered by that gloomy 
sign at the door was a house of mourning. 

He was about to turn away, when the door opened, and 
a servant appeared. 

It was Mary, and her eyes were red with weeping. 

“ I wanted to see Mr. Clifford Bancroft,” Dyn said, “ but 
I didn’t know of that”— lie nodded toward the crape— 
“ and I won't go in. I’ll see him some other time.” 

“ The funeral will take pla<'e at eleven o’clock to-morrow 
morning,’’ Mary said, “and after that he may see you, 
may be, if your business is important” — . 


118 


DAISY DARRELL. 


“ It is rather important,” Dan said, turning to go away^ 
“ and I’ll call to-morrow afternoon.” 

Clifford remained shut up in his own room until after 
the funeral. 

Instead of the grief which bereaved ones feel at such 
times, there was with him a feeling of quiet. 

It seemed to him that he was born to bring ill luck, and 
sorrow, and death to the women who loved him, 

“ It is my fault— I have been such a weak man — such a 
coward ! I ou^t to have dealt openly with Daisy — openly 
with Geraldine, and then this terrible tangle— this awful 
ending — would never have come ! I am done with conceal- 
ments — done with acting a part henceforth and forever ! 
Oil 1 if I had only been manly enough to have pursued 
that course when I first went to Pinelands, what a world 
of misery might have been saved me — and them I” 

Worse than the bitterest grief could have been was the 
keen remorse that was with him during those first hours of 
his bereavement. 

The funeral was over, and he had gone back, and shut 
himself up in his room again — refusing all refreshments, 
and denying himself to all sympathetic visitors. 

But there was one caller who insisted on seeing him. 

“ Tell him that I bring him a message from a person 
who is very ill,” Dan Devenant said, planting himself 
firmly in the doorway. 

Mary went up-stairs with his message, and very soon 
returned. 

“ Mr. Bancroft says you may come to his room. Follow 
me.” 

So she conducted the persistent visitor into the presence 
of the widower. 

Clifford was standing On the hearth in his darkened 
chamber with his arm resting on the mantle when Dan 
appeared, and he looked curiously at him. 

He did not invite him to be seated. He merely said 
curtly : 

“You have a message for me, I understand, sir. What 
is it, and who sends it ”’ 

“The message is from Madame Astraea,” Dan said, 
coolly; “she wants to see you— she was very ill when I 
left her yesterday morning, and she may be dead by this 
time.” 

Clifford Bancroft’s face grew deathly pale, and he turned 
it aside, so that it was hidden from Dan’s keen eyes. He 
did not speak for fully a minute. He was ashamed that at 
that hour the possibility of any woman’s death save that 
of Geraldine could stir his s:>ul v/ith pain. 


DARHELL, 


119 

He hated himself for the pang that the announcement 
sent through his heart. 

What was it to him whether Madame Astraea were living 
or dead at tliat moment? 

What was the life or death of any woman to him now, 
save only the woman he had legally made Ins wife— Daisy 
Darrell? 

If Madame Astraea had sent for him, he would go to her— 
he could not refuse to do that- -and if he found her alive he 
would meet her as a brother. He would deal fairly and 
candidly by her. He would tell her all. 

The resolution gave him courage to look Dan Devenant 
in the face, while he said, speaking -wearily: 

“ Of course, if she is ill, and has sent for me, I must go 
to her. I will find her at Silver View, I suppose.” 

“No,” Dan answered. “I left her at my mother’s cot- 
tage, nearly five miles from Silver View, and if she is alive 
when we arrive, we will be apt to find her there.” 

Then he briefly told the circumstances leading to her 
being at the cottage of the Widow Woodruff, and when he 
ended they went away together, and in the gloaming four 
hours afterward Clifford Bancroft stood in the little house, 
and in the presence of Madame Astrsea, who had fully re- 
covered her consciousness, and who looked wonderingly at 
him as he entered the tidy room in which only the twilight 
threw a soft radiance. 


CHAPTER XXX. 

‘ ‘ NO, NO— NOT GOOD-BYE I” 

The shock she had undergone had left Madame Astraea 
very weak, but with that exception no bad effects of it 
were remaining with her when Clifford Bancroft entered 
the room where she was lying on a lounge, with Maggie 
sitting beside her in the twilight. 

As ner brother and Clifford appeared unannounced in 
the room, Maggie arose and offered the visitor her chair 
beside Madame Astraea, which he took without a word. 

He looked on the beautiful face lying there on the pillow 
before him as one looks on the face of the beloved dead. 

She was the one woman he loved with an absorbing love, 
and he felt that in yielding to the passion he committed a 
sin against her, against himself, and against Daisy Darrell, 
who, if she were living — and he felt that she was— was the 
only woman on earth who had a right to his love. 

“Why did you come here, Mr. Bancroft?” Madame 
Astraea asked, seeing that lie did not speak. 

She put the question in the cold, even tones with which 


120 


DAISY DARRELL. 


she was accustomed to address him, and his face flushed 
with embarrassment as he answered : 

“ I came at your request— you sent for me. Did you not 
tell me that she sent for me?” he asked, turning his face 
toward Dan Devenant, M^ho had lingered in the room. 

Dan answered respectfully, addressing his words to the 
lady, who was looking sternly at him: 

“I went for him. madame, because you called inces- 
santly for him,” he said, edging near to the door, and pass- 
ing out of it as soon as he had made the assertion. 

With an instinctive idea that the explanation between 
those two might be of a confidential nature, Maggie, too, 
had left the room, and they were alone together, 

“If I called for you, I was delirious, ” Madame Astrsea 
said, turning her face away from him. “Dan Devenant 
might have had common sense enough to know that there 
was no meaning in my words, and he should not have 
gone for you. Why shot! Id I have sent for you?” she went 
on passionately, in her bodily weakness losing control of 
her words, as it were. “What are you to me, or what 
am I to you?” 

Clifford Bancroft bowed his head on his hands, and a 
sort of smothered groan broke from him. 

“ Whatever you are to me, I am glad that I am nothing 
to you,” he said impulsively, “because I seem fated to 
bring misfortune on every w^oman who cares for me ! The 
two who loved and trusted me found only misery in that 
love — to both it brought despair, and to one, at least, 
death!” 

He spoke bitterly, with his head bowed, and his forehead 
hidden in his hand. 

Madame Astrsea had sprung up to a sitting posture. 
The shadows of the twilight were deep in the room, so he 
could not have seen, even if he had been looking at her, 
which he was not, how deathly white her face was. 

“One of the two met death, you say,” she spoke hoarsely, 
after a brief silence; “which was it?” 

He answered, with a world of self-accusation, of self-re- 
proach, in his bitter tones : 

“ This morning I buried Geraldine, the woman you have 
known as my wife. The shock brought on by the knowl- 
edge that she was not legally my wife, killed her. It took 
her life like a sword-thrust through her heart, and I feel, 
God help me, that I was her murderer! Yet when I mar- 
ried her, I meant her no harm, poor girl, and I was honest 
in what I did. I knew that she loved me, and I thought I 
would marry her; I thought I was free to do it. God 
knows, I could never have done her the terrible wrong 
she thought I did. I had dreamed there had been any 


DAISY DARRELL. 


121 


mistake about Daisy’s death, I would have allowed myself 
to have been burned at a stake before I would have brought 
shame on her, and crime on myself, by marrying her.” 

He was speaking in a rambling, incoherent way, and he 
did not seem to be addressing his remarks to Madame As- 
traea. He appeared to have forgotten her presence, and 
the wildness of his words and manner led her to believe 
that his reason was wandering. 

With wide eyes and parted lips she stared at his bowed 
face in the deepening gloom, with a chaos of ideas in her 
mind. 

Impulsively, she reached out her hand and placed it 
heavily on his shoulder. 

“What do you mean about Daisy’s being dead ?” she 
asked quiveringly. “If you are in your right mind, tell 
me what you meant by saying that you thought you were 
free to marry Geraldine Fitzgerald, when you certainly 
knew that you had already a living wife.” 

Her vehement words brought him to himself, as it were; 
her kn3wledge of his affairs surprised him. 

What did she know about his former marriage? 

He did not give utterance to these thoughts. She might 
explain or not, as she felt inclined. As for him he would 
deal candidly and openly with her. He was resolved that 
it should be the last interview they would ever hold on 
earth. 

Neither Maggie, nor her mother, nor Dan came into the 
room to bring a light. Only the radiance of the rising 
moon stole in to them through the open window, and it cast 
a pale glow on the disturbed face of Clifford Bancroft as he 
talked : 

“I have been twice married. It was your likeness to 
my first wife which attracted me toward you in the begin- 
ning, I think. But I was a moth that approached too near 
a dangerous flame when I hovered near you. You know 
how it ended. I fell madly in love with you— wickedly in 
love with you ; I being bound by every tie of honor to 
Geraldine.” 

“ I deny it!” Madame Astrsea exclaimed, starting to her 
feet in the excitement of the moment, and quivering from 
head to foot. “ You were bound by every tie of honor to 
Daisy Darrell!” 

He reached up and caught her arm. “ Sit down,” he 
commanded, “and let me tell you of Daisy Darrell. I 
don’t know how much you may know about her, for I did 
not dream that you had ever heard the mention of her 
name even. 

“When I first saw her, I was in love with her cousin,. 
Geraldine Fitzgerald, or fancied that I was, for I know, 


m 


DAISY DARItELL. 


now that I never really loved but one woman on earth — 
and she was neither Geraldine Fitzgerald, nor Daisy Dar- 
rell —although at different times I fancied myself madly 
in love with each. 

“I was young and impulsive, and while the spell of 
Daisy Darrell’s power was over me, I persuaded her into 
a secret marriage with me, and then, coward tliat I was, 
I was afraid to present her to my family as my wife, sim- 
ply because her ways were uncultured. So, weak fool 
that I was, I kept the marriage a profound secret, and all 
the time I was engaged to Geraldine Fitzgerald, and al- 
though I did not love her — not half as well as I did Daisy, 
I, like the coward that I was, postponed breaking the en- 
gagement with her from day to day until, I suppose, some 
hint of the state of affairs reached the ears of Daisy, and 
in the disgust and hatred of me it inspired, she ran away 
from me. I was shocked and grieved when I found her 
gone, and I sought earnestly for her, and if I had found 
her, I intended by my devotion to make amends for my 
former neglect. I .intended to proclaim her to the world 
as my wife. - 

“I thought I had found her at last — found her dead in 
the Morgue, where her drowned body had been- taken 
from the river. The features of the dead woman were 
swollen beyond recognition, but she was wrapped in 
Daisy’s shawl, in one corner of which was her name, which 
I had seen my wife embroider with her own little hands. 

“I asked no further proof. I buried her as my wife, 
and then, as Geraldine loved me so, and I could not call 
Daisy back to life, as I would gladly, oh, how gladly ! have 
done, I married Geraldine.” 

The moonlight streaming clear and bright into his face 
showed the troubled look that was in it, and Madame 
Astrsea turned her head and looked away through the 
window on the silvery night. 

“I found out,” he went on, wearily, “from a letter 
Daisy had written to the clergyman who married us, that 
aterriole mistake hnd been made in the identity of the 
drowned woman ; that Daisy was alive at the time of my 
marriage with Geraldine. 

“That letter fell accidently into Geraldine's hands, 
and— she had heart trouble — the shock killed her, poor 
woman!” 

A break came into his voice, and he arose. 

“ It is the last time we shall ever meet,” he said, extend- 
ing both his hands to her, and speaking very huskily. “ It 
is best that it should be so — it is best for my sake, and for 
Daisy’s, that our parting should be final. I am going to 
search for her, far and wide, and if she is living, I will de- 


DAISY DADRELL, m 

vote my life to her, and will try to love her, if she will for- 
give me the sorrow I have brought on her in the past. 
Good-bye.” 

That last word died in a gurgle in his throat. 

“No, no— not good-bye !” Madame Astrsea exclaimed, im- 
pulsively throwing her arms around liis neck. “Oh, 
Clifford, don’t you know me? Don’t you know your wild, 
silly little wife — Daisy? I have been more wicked than 
you were, Clifford. You were deceived when you married 
Geraldine, and it was no sin — but I sinned when I allowed 
you to go on in the error — I should have undeceived you, 
instead of using the wealth that came unexpectedly to me, 
to wreak vengeance on you. I tried to win your love — but 
not froni a good motive — it was thac I might wring your 
heart with the scorn I meant to have given you. But 
I loved you all the time, Clifford, and if you will forgive 
and take me back to your heart, I will continue trying to 
make you love me !” 

When Heaven opens for Clifford Bancroft he will scarcely 
be happier than he was at that moment when he realized 
that the woman he loved with all his soul was his own 
wedded wife — Daisy Darrell ! 

Clifford Bancroft went to Europe, and so did Madame 
Astraea, but “tlie world,” or so much of it as composed 
their circle of associates, never knew that they went to- 
gether, When they returned in the course of the year as 
man and wife, it was asserted that they had been married 
at the home of one of the bride’s English uncles, and no 
one questioned the truth of the statement. 

That same year New York congratulated itself on the 
loss of a nuisance. Dan Devenant’s dance house was 
closed, and Dan joined the church, and, wonderful to re- 
late, married Bridget Conner, and retired to the country 
and devoted himself to domestic and agricultural pursuits. 

His home was a beautiful cottage situated in a broad 
sweep of fertile ground, where he resided with his mother 
and wife, and at Silver View, the adjoining p.antation, John 
Goldman lived with his mother, and his wife, who had 
been Maggie Woodruff. 

These estates were the absolute property of Dan Deve- 
nant and John Goldman, and were the gift of Mrs. Clifford 
Bancroft, whom they had known only as Madame Astrsea. 

But in each deed occurred this sentence : 

“ For kindness done to Daisy Darrell.” 


[the end.] 


Munro’s Library. 

NORMAN L. MUNRO, Publisher, 

« 

P. O. Box 3643» 24 and 26 Vandewater St,, y, T, 


The following works are for sale by the Newsdealer 


Any of these books can be had,, handsomely bound in 
Cloth and Gold, at 35 cents per volume. 


LIST OP AUTHORS. 

COMPILED FOR EASY REFERENCE. 


MRS. ALEXANDER’S WORKS. 

KO. PRICE, 

75 — The Executor 20 

181 — Maid, Wife or Widow? 10 

186— The Wooing O’t 20 

195— Which Snail It Be? 20 

MRS. LENOX BELL’S WORKS. 

NO. PRICE, 

93 — Not to be Won 20 

99 — Wife or Slave? 20 

WILLIAM BLACK’S WORKS. 

^ , , PRICE. 

25— Yolande 20 

8G— A Princess of Thule 20 

177 — White Wings: A Yachting Eomance 20 

233— Judith Shakespeare 20 


MXmEO^S LIBRARr,---‘AUTHORS^ LIST, 

Works by the Author of H(S WEDDED WIFE.’* 

PRIGS, 

127 — ^Hig Wedded Wife JJO 

233 — Great Mistake 20 

223 — Fatal Dower 20 

> 

MISCELLANEOUS WORKS. 

so. MUGS 

24 — The Two Orphans, by D’Ennery 1 

27 — When the Ship Comes Home, by Besant and Rice 10 

28 — John Halifax, Gentleman, by Miss Mulock 20 

80— The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid 10 

83 — Kit: a Memory, by James Payn 20 

43 — Charlotte Temple, by Mrs. Rowson 10 

49 — Romance of a Poor Young Man, by Feuillet 10 

62 — Two Wedding Rings, by Margaret Blount 20 

63 — Led Astray, by Helen M. Lewis 20 

56 — The Curse of Dangerfield, by Elsie Snow 20 

60 — A Queen Amongst Women, and Between Two Sins 20 

62 — Lucile, by Owen Meredith 20 

63 — Thaddeus of Warsaw, by Jane Porter 20 

64— Charles Auchester, by E. Berger 20 

67 — Barbara’s History, by Amelia B. Edwards 20 

68— Called to Account, by Annie Thomas 20 

78 —A Double Marriage, by Beatrice Collensie 20 

79— The Wentworth Mystery, by Watts Phillips 20 

81 — Plot and Counterplot, Author of “Quadroona” 20 

86— Little Golden 20 

67 — Daughters of Eve, by Paul Meritt 20 

91 — A Fatal Wooing, by Laura Jean Libbey 20 

94 — Merit Versus Money, by Garnett Mamell 20 

98 — Pauline, by the Author of “Leonnette’s Secret” 20 

101— Dregs and Froth, by A. H. Wall 20 

108— The Eyrie, and The Mystery of a Young Girl 20 

109 — Gabrielle, by Louise McCarthy 20 

132 — Circumstantial Evidence 10 

123— Life and Memoirs of Sarah Barnum 10 

124— Marjorie’s Child 20 

126 — A Coachman’s Love, by Herbert Bernard 20 

126 — A Dangerous Game, by Ida Linn Girard 10 

133— The Beautiful Rivals 10 

134 — For a Dream’s Sake, by Mrs. Herbert Martin 20 

135— Mark Seaworth, by William H. G. Kingston 20 

136— Regimental Legends, by J. S. Winter. 30 

137 — The Heidenmauer, by J. Fenimore Cooper 20 

138 — Susan Drummond, liiy Mrs. J. H. Riddell 20 

139— Robbing Peter to Pay Paul, by John Saunders 20 

142 — The Flirt, by Mrs. Grey 20 

145— The New Abelard, by Robert Buchanan 10 

150— Sarah Barnum’s Answer 10 

151 — The Queen’s Book, Victoria R. 1 10 

162— John Pjrown’s Legs, by Kenward Philp. 


Mvmcrs LTSRARY.^AUmORS* Lisn 

MISCELLANEOUS VvORKS.-ContInued. 

ao. fnjcB 

168— 'Berlin Society, by Count Paul Vasili 10 

165 — Life’s Joys, by Emile Zola 20 

168~Leonine, by the Author of For Mother’s Sake 20 

165 — Not Like Other Girls, by Rosa Nouchette Carey 20 

166 — The Midshipman, Marmadnke Merry 20 

168— An Old Man’s Love, by Anthony Trollope 10 

170— John Bull and His Island, by Max O’Rell 10 

180— The Sun Maid, by Miss Grant 20 

182— Cornin’ Thro’ the" Rye, by Helen B. Mathers 20 

183— Nancy, by Rhoda Brouj^hton 20 

202— The Mysteries of Louis Napoleon’s Court 20 

208 —The Way of the World, by David Christie Murray 20 

204 — Wild Oats, by Henry Greville 20 

206— Claire and the Forge-Master, by Georges Ohnet 20 

207— The Man She Cared For, by F. W. Robinson 20 

208— Pretty Miss Neville, by B. M. Croker 20 

^9— Fourteen Years With Adelina Patti 10 

210 — Sappho, by Alphonse Daudet 10 

213 — Cruel as the Grave, by Genevieve Ulmar 20 

215— Called Back, by Hugh Conway 10 

228 — A Sinless Secret, by “ Rita ” iO 

231 — ^The Gambler’s Wife, by Author of “The Belle of the 

Family,” etc 20 

232 — John Bull’s Neighbor 10 

234— Beyond Recall, by Adeline Sergeant 10 

235 — The Parisian Detective, by F. Du Boisgobey lO 

239 — Love and Mirage 10 

243 — A Sea Change, by Flora L. Shaw 20 

245— At War With Herself, by Bertha M. Clay.,... 10 

246 — John Bull’s Misfortunes ]0 

248 — From Out the Gloom, by Bertha M. Clay * 20 

249 — Love’s Warfare, by Bertha M. Clay 10 

250 — The Queen of Hearts, by Wilkie Collins 20 

251 — A Story of Three Sisters, by C. Maxwell 20 

252— -Moonshine and Marguerites, and Monica, by the 

“Duchess” 16 

253— Loys, Lord Berresford, and The Witching Hour, by the 

“Duchess” 10 

254 — The Knightsbridge Mysterv, and The Picture, by 

Charles Reade “ 10 

255— Sweet is True Love, and “ That Last Rehearsal,” by the 

“Duchess” 10 

256 — Beau Tancrede, by Alex. Dumas 20 

257— Tom Brown's School Days, by Thos. Hughes...!..!.*.'..*..*. 20 

258 — The Pathfinder, by J. Fenimore Coo’^er 20 


Munro’s LpRARY is for sale by all Newsdealers, or will be 
sent to any address, on receipt of marked price, by the publisher 
Address, 

mUNRO’S PUBLISHING HOUSE, 

g4 and 23 Vandawater St., N. Y, 





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MRSi. ALEX. McYElGH MILLER'S WORKS. 

1. A Dreadful Tem^atlon 

2. The Bride of the Tomb 

3. An Old Man’s Darling L 

4. Queenle’s Terrible Secret 

5. Jaquellna 

6. Little Golden’s Daughter 

7. The Rose and the Lily 

8. Countess Vera 

9. Bonnie Dora 

10. Guy Kenmore’s Wife 


.20 Cents. 
.20 “ 

.20 « 
.20 •* 
.20 “ 

.20 “ 

.20 •* 

.20 •• 
,20 “ 

.20 •• 


GEORGE ELIOT’S WORKS. 


“ 11. Janet’s Repentance 10 

“ 12. Silas Marner 10 

» 13. Felix Holt, the Radical 20 

“ 14. The Mill on the Floss 20 

“ 15. Brother Jacob 10 

“ 16. Adam Bede 20 

“ 17. Romola 20 

“ 18. Sad Fortunes of Rev. Amos Barton. 10 

“ 19. Daniel Deronda 20 

“ 20. Middlemarch ^ 

“ 21. Mr. Gilfil’s Love Story 10 

“ 22. The Spanish Gypsy 20 

“ 23. Impressions of Theophrastus Such 10 


MISCELLAXEOES WORSTS. 

“ 24. The Two Orphans. By D’Ennery 10 

“ 25. Yolande. By William Black 20 

“ 26. Lady Audley’s Secret. By Miss Braddon 20 

“ 27. When the Ship Comes Home. By Besant & Rice 10 

“ 28. John Halifax, Gentleman. By Miss Mulock 20 

“ 29. In Peril of his Life By Gaboriau 2o 

“ 30. The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid 10 

“ 31. Molly Bawn. By the Duchess 20 

“ 32. Portia. By the Duchess 20 

*' 33. Kit; a Memory. By James Pay^ne 20 

“ 34. East Lynne. By Mrs. Henry Wood 20 

“ 35. Her Mother’s Sin. By Bertha M. Clay 10 

“ 36. A Princess of Thule. By WilUam Black 20 

“ 37. PhylUs. By the Duchess 20 

38. David Copperfleld. By Charles Dickens 20 

39. Very Hard Cash. By Charles Reade 20 

“ 40. Ivanhoe. By Sir Walter Scott • 20 

“ 41. Shirley. By Miss Bronte 20 

“ 42. The Last Days of Pompeii. By Bulwer Lytton 20 

“ 43. Charlotte Temple. By Miss Rowson 10 

** 44. Dora Thorne. By Bertha M. day 20 

“ 45. Old Curiosity Shop. By Charles Dickens 20 

” 46. Camille. By Alex. Dumas. Jr 10 

“ 47. The Three Guardsmen. By Alex. Dumas 20 

“ 48. Jane Eyre By Charlotte Bronte 20 

“ 49. Romance of a Poor Young Man. By Feuillet 10 

“ 50. Back to the Old Home. By Mary Cecil Hay 10 

“ 51. Maggie; or, the Loom Girl of Lowell. By William Mason Turner, M. D.20 

“ 52. Two Wedding Rings. By Margaret Blount 20 

“ 53. Led Astray. By Helen M. Lewis 2o 

“ 54. A Woman’s Atonement. By Adah M. Howard 20 

“ 55. False. By Geraldine Fleming 20 

“ 56. The Curse of Dangerfleld. By Elsie Snow, 26 

“ 57. Ten Years of His Life. By Eva Evergreen 26 

58. A Woman’s Fault. By Evelyn Gray 26 

“ 59. Twenty Years After. By Alex. Dumas 20 

“ 60. A Queen Amongst Women and Between Two Sins. By Bertha M. Clay .26 

“.61. Madolin’s Lover. By Bertha M. Clay. 26 

“ 62. Thaddeus of Warsaw. By Jane Porter 26 

“ 63. Luclle. By Owen Meredith 2o 

“ 64. Charles Auchester. By E. Berger 20 

“ 65. A Strange Story. By Bulwer 20 

“ 66. Aurora Floyd. By Miss Braddon 26 

“ 67. Barbara’s History. By Amelia B. Edwards 20 

“ 68. Called to Account. By Annie Thomas 2') 

“ 69. Old Myddleton’s Money. By Mary Cecil Hay 20 

“ 70. Thorns and Orange Blossoms. By Bertha M. Clay. Complete 10 


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Remember that we do not charge extra for postage. Munro’s Library will be 
sent to any part of the world, single numbers for 10 cents, double numbers f«r 
20 cents. 


NORMAN L. MUNRO, PUBLISHER, 

24 & 26 Vandewater St., N. Y. 




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